Congress wrestles with sea lions

Sea lions were the subject of congressional discussions last week. The U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Natural Resources took on the Columbia River’s salmon-eating sea lion problem in a nearly two-and-a-half hour hearing last week.

After establishing the scale of the sea lion population explosion around the Pacific Northwest, the meeting looked at the effectiveness of legislative efforts to address the problem — mostly centering around killing them. The killings had largely faded from controversy as other proposed solutions to salmon extinction have floundered, leaving sea lions as an obvious target. That culminated earlier this year when the federal permit that allows Northwest states and some Native nations to trap and kill sea lions in the Columbia River was reapproved without almost any opposition.

‘Numbers so small?’

The reapproved permit allowed hundreds of sea lions that weren’t killed under a 2020 approval to be killed by 2030. During the hearing, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, questioned why more of the 716 that were initially approved to be killed had not been. “Ask yourself, why? Why are these numbers so small?” she told a senior National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries official during the hearing.

“The arduous process of removal is a key feature.”

Perez said her office estimates it costs about $38,000 for every sea lion removed from the Columbia River, adding that that amounted to the state and federal governments spending $203 for each salmon saved by those killings.

Inter-Tribe speaks

The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission’s sea lion program removed 515 sea lions between 2008 and this fall. Those killings have saved more than 100,000 fish. The commission’s executive director, Aja DeCoteau, testified during the hearing, representing the treaty-reserved rights of four Columbia Basin Native nations.   “Historically, our elders remember an occasional sea lion reaching Celilo Falls,” she said. “However, these occurrences were rare. Now, a combination of hydro-system infrastructure, changing environmental conditions and the success of the Marine Mammal Protection Act has resulted in unprecedented numbers of sea lions in the Columbia River.” That 1972 act was passed to protect marine mammals like sea lions, but it has allowed the ecosystem to shift out of balance in recent decades, according to sport fishing groups, Native nations and salmon advocates. The first three Steller sea lions were officially documented at Bonneville Dam in 2003, according to NOAA Fisheries. Fifteen years later, the agency found “a minimum of 66 animals were observed at the dam during a single day.”

500 to about 4,000

In the past decade, the number of California sea lions in the Columbia River basin jumped from fewer than 500 to about 4,000. DeCoteau urged Congress to expand current removal efforts and research on the problem, adding that her commission does not want to manage the animal’s populations forever. “Lethal removals of animals with this learned behavior will minimize predation now and prevent new sea lions from establishing this pattern into the future,” she said. Recovery undermined The American Sportfishing Association’s Pacific Fisheries policy director, Larry Phillips, also testified during the hearing. He said sea lions were undermining Columbia River salmon-restoration spending. Research has found federal and state agencies have spent about $9 billion on the problem in the past four decades. Critics note, however, that those totals include theoretical costs like power that could have been otherwise generated. Phillips ended his testimony by urging Congress to update the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow sea lion killings in Columbia River hot spots and around the region. “We must also be honest: Continuing to spend billions on recovery and continually restricting fisheries without meaningfully addressing predation will produce a predictable outcome that will not result in recovery,” Phillips said.

The Murrow News Fellowship is a state-funded journalism project managed by Washington State University.