Judge gives go-ahead to kill salmon-munching sea lions

A federal judge this week gave the go-ahead to kill sea lions feasting on salmon at Bonneville Dam, but a Washington state fishery manager said Wednesday that managers will continue to try to trap and relocate the animals first.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman on Tuesday ruled against the Humane Society of the United States, which sued to block the lethal-take permit issued to state fishery managers earlier this year by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The states want to kill nuisance sea lions that have in recent years taken advantage of a man-made bottleneck to devour imperiled salmon.

“We’re disappointed and planning to appeal,” said Sharon Young, the organization’s marine issues director.

In the meantime, state fishery managers plan to continue last spring’s trap-and-haul program beginning in March. Oregon and Washington fishing managers established live traps to capture nuisance sea lions identified by brands on their hides, although that program was suspended in early May after six animals died of heat stroke.

State officials will continue to contact zoos and aquariums willing to take nuisance animals, said Guy Norman, regional director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Vancouver.

“We would plan to take off where we left off, which is focus on the relocation efforts initially,” Norman said. “We did have room for 19 animals last year. We filled six of those (slots), and we’re hoping those vacancies would still remain.”

The fisheries service granted a request by Washington, Oregon and Idaho to lethally remove nuisance animals congregating in front of the dam. Three years of intensive springtime hazing failed to dissuade sea lions, which gathered by the dozen in front of the dam.

State and federal biologists estimate California sea lions ate about 3,900 fish at the dam in 2007, which amounts to about 4.2 percent of all the fish that arrived at the dam from January to the end of May. During the same period this year, the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dam, observed 4,230 salmon and steelhead eaten by almost 100 sea lions — about 2.8 percent of a larger overall run.

Among the Humane Society’s arguments, it contends those numbers are too low to meet the threshold under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which allows the killing of nuisance sea lions only if they’re having a “significant adverse effect” on endangered salmon. By comparison, the Humane Society argued, state fishery managers allow human fishermen to incidentally kill as much as 12 percent of imperiled wild fish.

However, federal officials assert that the sea lions’ actual kill rate probably is higher than what observers can see.

Mosman agreed. He cited a calculation by federal managers that the rate of predation at Bonneville Dam in 2007 could have been as high as 12.6 percent of spring chinook salmon and 22.1 percent of steelhead.

Further, Mosman noted that states have curtailed fishing substantially in recent years to protect imperiled wild salmon stocks.

“In contrast ... pinniped predation is growing, and the states have not been able to control or regulate it,” the judge wrote.

7 Things You Didn’t Know About HSUS

1) The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a “humane society” in name only, since it doesn’t operate a single pet shelter or pet adoption facility anywhere in the United States. During 2006, HSUS contributed only 4.2 percent of its budget to organizations that operate hands-on dog and cat shelters. In reality, HSUS is a wealthy animal-rights lobbying organization (the largest and richest on earth) that agitates for the same goals as PETA and other radical groups.

2) Beginning on the day of NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s 2007 dogfighting indictment, HSUS raised money online with the false promise that it would “care for the dogs seized in the Michael Vick case.” The New York Times later reported that HSUS wasn’t caring for Vick’s dogs at all. And HSUS president Wayne Pacelle told the Times that his group recommended that government officials “put down” (that is, kill) the dogs rather than adopt them out to suitable homes. HSUS later quietly altered its Internet fundraising pitch.

3) HSUS’s senior management includes a former spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a criminal group designated as “terrorists” by the FBI. HSUS president Wayne Pacelle hired John “J.P.” Goodwin in 1997, the same year Goodwin described himself as “spokesperson for the ALF” while he fielded media calls in the wake of an ALF arson attack at a California veal processing plant. In 1997, when asked by reporters for a reaction to an ALF arson fire at a farmer’s feed co-op in Utah (which nearly killed a family sleeping on the premises), Goodwin replied, “We’re ecstatic.” That same year, Goodwin was arrested at a UC Davis protest celebrating the 10-year anniversary of an ALF arson at the university that caused $5 million in damage. And in 1998, Goodwin described himself publicly as a “former member of ALF.”

4) According to a 2008 Los Angeles Times investigation, less than 12 percent of money raised for HSUS by California telemarketers actually ends up in HSUS’s bank account. The rest is kept by professional fundraisers. And if you exclude two campaigns run for HSUS by the “Build-a-Bear Workshop” retail chain, which consisted of the sale of surplus stuffed animals (not really “fundraising”), HSUS’s yield number shrinks to just 3 percent. Sadly, this appears typical. In 2004, HSUS ran a telemarketing campaign in Connecticut with fundraisers who promised to return a minimum of zero percent of the proceeds. The campaign raised over $1.4 million. Not only did absolutely none of that money go to HSUS, but the group paid $175,000 for the telemarketing work.

5) Research shows that HSUS’s heavily promoted U.S. “boycott” of Canadian seafood—announced in 2005 as a protest against Canada’s annual seal hunt—is a phony exercise in media manipulation. A 2006 investigation found that 78 percent of the restaurants and seafood distributors described by HSUS as “boycotters” weren’t participating at all. Nearly two-thirds of them told surveyors they were completely unaware HSUS was using their names in connection with an international boycott campaign. Canada’s federal government is on record about this deception, saying: “Some animal rights groups have been misleading the public for years … it’s no surprise at all that the richest of them would mislead the public with a phony seafood boycott.”

6) HSUS raised a reported $34 million in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, supposedly to help reunite lost pets with their owners. But comparatively little of that money was spent for its intended purpose. Louisiana’s Attorney General shuttered his 18-month-long investigation into where most of these millions went, shortly after HSUS announced its plan to contribute $600,000 toward the construction of an animal shelter on the grounds of a state prison. Public disclosures of the disposition of the $34 million in Katrina-related donations add up to less than $7 million.

7) After gathering undercover video footage of improper animal handling at a Chino, CA slaughterhouse during November of 2007, HSUS sat on its video evidence for three months, even refusing to share it with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. HSUS’s Dr. Michael Greger testified before Congress that the San Bernardino County (CA) District Attorney’s office asked the group “to hold on to the information while they completed their investigation.” But the District Attorney’s office quickly denied that account, even declaring that HSUS refused to make its undercover spy available to investigators if the USDA were present at those meetings. Ultimately, HSUS chose to release its video footage at a more politically opportune time, as it prepared to launch a livestock-related ballot campaign in California. Meanwhile, meat from the slaughterhouse continued to flow into the U.S. food supply for months.

http://www.consumerfreedom.com/article_detail.cfm/article/184

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