Don't Shoot Sea Lions, Environmentalists Tell USA

Don't Shoot Sea Lions, Environmentalists Tell USA

WASHINGTON (CN) - The Humane Society challenged a National Marine Fisheries Service decision to authorize state agents to shoot as many as 92 "docile and federally protected" California sea lions every year for five years, because the sea lions eat Chinook and steelhead salmon.

The Humane Society of the United States, the Wild Fish Conservancy and two people sued Secretary of Commerce John Bryson and two top National Marine Fisheries Service officials in Federal Court, claiming their recent decision to authorize shooting of sea lions in the Columbia River is arbitrary and capricious and violates the Administrative Procedures Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammals Protection Act.

"Sea lions eat fish," the plaintiffs concede in their 44-page complaint. "Each year, California sea lions eat between 0.4 and 4.2 percent of the 80,000 to 300,000 salmon and steelhead that spawn in the Columbia River. In comparison, fishermen are authorized to take approximately up to 17 percent of adults, hydroelectric dams are allowed to take up to 17 percent of adults, and non-native fish such as bass and walleye (of which hundreds of thousands are intentionally released by the government each year), take more than 2 million juveniles each year. Despite these impacts, recent Chinook salmon returns have been among the highest seen in a decade, and the states of Washington and Oregon have increased the amount of take permitted by fishermen over the last few years, allowing fishermen to take up to 12 percent of the total run in 2011, over 10 times the 1.1 percent total consumption by California sea lions that same year."

Despite the sea lions' consumption of "minuscule" amounts of the salmon, the NMFS decided in 2008 that state agents should shoot up to 85 sea lions a year. The plaintiffs sued, claiming that the Marine Mammal Protection Act allowed killing or harassing of marine mammals only if they had "'a significant negative impact on the decline or recovery' of threatened or endangered salmon and steelhead populations."

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/03/21/44881.htm