CA Seals and Sealions eating all of WA Springers?
- Thread starter The Coho King
- Start date
Unfortunately, it's up to the feds, and they seem to not be particularly fond of culling the sea lions much.
The Coho King
Smolt
Guess the Feds and WDFW will just let them eat all the fish so they can starve. I've just never seen this many and in the tributaries.
WDFW and ODFW have actually wanted to do something for a while. Thing is they literally can't.
What WDFW and ODFW "could" do is mention that they won't be enforcing against miscreants who perform a little vigilante culling of seals and sea lions. There aren't enough federal agency LE to even come close to covering the area. Not suggesting anything here, just thinking slightly out side the box.
The Coho King
Smolt
These critters are upriver with no commercial netting, which the tribes usually do a good job at least shooting fireworks at them. WDFW still enforces trapping moles, so highly doubt they would turn blind eye to a seal. I just don't ever recall such a mass of seals and sealions upriver. Guess they are starving already.
Part of the huge influx of them this year was due to the smelt runs. That brought in a LOT of sea lions.
HauntedByWaters
Life of the Party
DoesItFloat
Life of the Party
Pre-Colonization Seals and Sea Lions did forage pretty far upriver in the Columbia right? I found this paper that says they were common all the way to Celilo Falls where they gathered in large concentrations. I would assume that the federal/state regulator's justification for not just doing lethal removal is that this isn't a new behavior spurred by the dam placement they are just resuming what they were doing before. Is there any possibility that the seals carrying capacity will be limited by something other than food like competition for space, disease, etc. and the population at Bonneville will max out? Like I'm imagining if managers could just go okay Bonneville dam/lower Columbia River as a whole supports around x number of seals which take around x number of fish, then factor that into broader calculations for allowable take, just like every other natural factor that affects salmon populations and is factored into fisheries forecasts. That seems a lot less silly than just killing/removing them when there are always going to be more to replace the ones we take away. Especially since this doesn't seem like a very uncommon behavior where we could just get rid of the bad apples and be good for a while, given that seals forage pretty far upriver on most coastal streams with a salmon presence.
Battle over endangered fish has led Oregon to cull sea lions
Though sea lions generally benefit from federal protections, their voracious appetite for salmon has provoked Oregon into culling hundreds of them.
www.kgw.com
“Until 2020, sea lions could only be killed if they were gathering at the Bonneville Dam or Willamette Falls. But now, the federal government has issued a permit to Oregon, Washington, Idaho and six regional tribes to kill the animals in certain zones across the Columbia River Basin — stretching from the I-205 bridge to east of Umatilla — as well as any tributary of the Columbia where endangered fish species spawn.”
It's not that it's uncommon behavior as much as their population has exploded in the last decade or so.
wanderingrichard
Life of the Party
Isn't there still like a $500,000 reward out for information leading to the arrest of the person who did exactly that about 8 years ago near the Bonneville dam?
DerekWhipple
Steelhead
The problem is "cute face" syndrome (I think sea lions are ugly, but harbor seals are cute). Your average person would gladly chose a couple hundred dead wild springers & steelhead over a dead sea lion. The couple in the Clackamas right now are probably chomping wild steelhead until the springers get here.
It's tough to argue what's "natural" in the Columbia basin with all the alterations these days. Sure, there used to be a mess of sea lions all the way up to Celilo falls, but you also have to acknowledge there also used to be ten million salmon and steelhead swimming around too. Plenty to go around at the time. They can come back after we take a few dams out.
It's tough to argue what's "natural" in the Columbia basin with all the alterations these days. Sure, there used to be a mess of sea lions all the way up to Celilo falls, but you also have to acknowledge there also used to be ten million salmon and steelhead swimming around too. Plenty to go around at the time. They can come back after we take a few dams out.
Wait, what? Do they hitch a ride through the lock? It'd be something else to see one in the window at the fish ladder.
ok, so hear me out. We have netters we want to retire from netting salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon. They could use those nets to trap sea lions and drag their asses back to the ocean. Or turn them loose on the terns on Sand Island. It's a win/win/win.
As fun as the relcoation idea sounds, they've relocated sea lions as far away as California and they still find their way back to the Columbia pretty quickly.
tkww
Life of the Party
How many sea lions do they have in Idaho?
JACKspASS
Life of the Party
Gone the way of the wolf, Bigfoot, and coyote.....lead poisoning, not many left