Posted on 01/18/2008 10:41:35 PM PST by SubGeniusX
PORTLAND, ORE. -- A federal agency recommends killing about 30 sea lions a year at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River to keep them from eating salmon and steelhead.
It was among four proposals listed by NOAA Fisheries Service after meetings of a task force last year and requests in 2006 by Oregon, Washington and Idaho to allow removal of some of the animals, which are protected under the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.
At least three upper Columbia River spring salmon runs that pass through the dam are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Sea lions, while protected, are not listed as threatened.
NOAA's recommendation is short of what the three states requested.
An amendment to the 1972 law allows states to get permission to kill identifiable sea lions or seals that have "a significant negative impact" on at-risk salmon and steelhead.
By many estimates, the sea lions devour about 4 percent of upriver spring runs.
NOAA Fisheries has jurisdiction over seals and sea lions and can grant the states' requests under some conditions.
The federal government agreed last January to consider the requests. It plans to take public testimony on the four alternatives through Feb. 19 and make a decision in March.
The sea lions have gathered at the base of the dam in recent years to feed on spring chinook. The fish gather there to climb ladders en route to upriver spawning grounds.
Commercial and sport fishermen and Columbia River tribes with treaty fishing rights for years have urged action against the animals.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
“This is what they should do to the seals at the mouth of the Klamath before they rip out the dams and find there is no water at all in the late fall...”
There you go again with reality and the documentation of over 100 years re there is no water in the Klamath in the fall without the dams.
In normal years, the rains stop in May and don’t start up again usually until late September/early October. The Klamath looked like a semi dry creek in the summer late fall.
A friend has pictures of her Dad, Uncles and Grandparents deer hunting in late summer at Happy Camp with her family standing in the middle of what is the Klamath river. Some years there was water at their ankles, some years mid calf, and a few years with no water.
Now with the dams there is a continual flow. Sometimes it “ain’t” much but it beats no flow.
They need to kill many more than thirty a year, and they need to kill more of the beasts down river from Bonneville. I believe the sea lion population in Oregon is around 200,000. This is higher than historical populations. Not only are they eating the hell out of salmon and steelhead, they are eating more and more sturgeon, and taking allot of the oversize ones that are the breeders. They need to cull as many as possible, as soon as possible. Plus, they are not seals, they are sea lions. Huge, aggressive, uncudly, fish eating, fish stealing, overly protected meat and fur animals. Kill, kill kill.
Have a lottery to kill these damn rats with flippers.
Anyone wanting a chance to kill the seals pays $100 for each lottery ticket.
Then, the chosen ones have to come up with a thousand $’s for the actual permit to kill these vermin with flippers.
The winners can have the meat/fur, or donate it to Indian Tribes or to the street people.
Do this on every river where steelhead and salmon migrate, and in a few years we will be over run with salmon and steelhead.
![]() |
Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Oregon Ping List.
If the butt clowns really wanted to protect the salmon they would ban the indians from gill netting the rivers.
Tastes like salmon chicken.
A prized population of Columbia River sturgeon is the latest victim in a familiar Pacific Northwest plot: Hungry sea lions exploit an artificial fish barrier, eat their fill of fish and defy wildlife officers to scare them away. The stage is the Columbia Gorge, downstream of Bonneville Dam, about 40 miles east of Portland, the first in a series of hydroelectric generators that bottle up endangered salmon and other species.
This time, Steller sea lions, the biggest members of the eared seal family and themselves threatened with extinction, dine on some of the largest and oldest freshwater fish in North America.
The prey are vulnerable matriarchs of a sturgeon population said to be among the worlds healthiest. Elsewhere, most sturgeon are extinct or nearly so. They have fallen victim to overfishing, poaching think beluga caviar and habitat destruction.
Yet white sturgeon below Bonneville persist at least until now.
Predation has suddenly put this in jeopardy, said Brad James, a Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist. If nothings done, the overall population will definitely suffer.
In this case, the villains are perhaps 10 male Steller sea lions, protected by the federal Endangered Species Act and weighing up to 2,400 pounds.
“Sanction the Nets... and Cull the Seals!”
I was living in WA when that dolt Boldt ruled that the words “in common with” meant that the tribes were entitled to 50% of the fish stocks.
I used to fish the Nooksack River, and catching 6-7 lb silvers was common. Sea run Cutthroats were averaging about 3 lbs, and it was nothing to fill a Steelhead card throught the winter.
Within 5 years of the “Boldt Decision” Silvers were averaging less than 3 lbs, sea run cuts were hardly being caught and you couldn’t hardly catch a steelhead.( about 100-150 hrs of hard fishing to even hook one.)
Of course it was all blamed on the loggers clear cutting the hills, which may have had some impact, but when you went down to the res, all you could see was nets, strung 3/4 of the way across the river, and staggered so nothing could get past that couldn’t squirt through the nets.
Some of the nets were left unattended for days and the fish just rotted in them.
This Sturgeon was caught on the Willamette River just below Oregon City two weeks ago. It weighed out at over 1,000 lbs and measured out at 11'1". It was 56" around the girth and took over 6 and a half hours, and 4 dozen beers, for the 4 guys taking turns at the reeling it in. Any Sturgeon OVER about five feet has to be released unharmed and cannot be removed from the water. They are brood / breeding stock and probably older than most of us.
That's why your fillet knife must be kept sharp! (Just make sure no one is watching!)
"I used to fish the Nooksack River, and catching 6-7 lb silvers was common. Sea run Cutthroats were averaging about 3 lbs, and it was nothing to fill a Steelhead card throught the winter."
I too spent many years fishing the Nooksack, Skagit, and many other rivers up here. I've quit trying for the most part. It's irritating as hell to sit on the bank (or in your drift boat) fishing with barbless hooks, where you can only "catch and release" most of the time! I'm a meat fisher/Hunter... what's the point?
To top that off, here I am, observing all the laws of DFG (which one has to be a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out) tossing one a barbless hook rig (which more than occassionaly tangles in the tribal net), while at the same time, here comes Tonto in his Hundred thousand dollar netboat, setting nets, pulling others up with twenty or thirty fish in it, glancing over at me and laughing! It's a preposterous place to be, and makes no sense in doing it...
BTW, Tonto keeps ALL the fish regardless of size, and the game wardens give a blind eye to all of it.
One of my non material Christmas gifts to my wife was a trip up our coast from Bodega to Gualala and back with no fly rods.
We did that yesterday.
The seals were working the entrances of the Gualala and the Russian after steelhead. We watched and walked along the Gualala near the entrance and saw no steelhead getting through the gauntlet of seals.
The same scene was repeated at Jenner for the Russian river except that was massive slaughter of the steelhead. Everyone of the fat slobs with flippers were in the 4 entrances/mouths the river had carved in the bar, (a couple of hundred seals live there). It was slaughter time for the seals. Most of the kills were the belly grab and chunked out to eat. They go for the roe. Then the rest of the steelhead is left for the gulls and crabs.
I think that I converted a young couple to “It’s time to kill seals”! They had been at Cassini’s ranch fishing with no luck with a couple of seals working the holes there. When they complained about no fish nor strikes even with roe as their lures, a crusty old fly fisher, (not me) told them to go to Jenner, drive through and pull over on the side of 1 by the cliffs at the mouth of the river to see why. They were appalled at the carnage and slaughter. Neither had caught a steelhead in the last 6 seasons. Now they know why.
What a generous husband you are! It sounds like we are inflicted by the same addiction.
The sight of sea lions ripping salmon and steelhead bellies out is truly sickening. Kill them now! At least more and more people seem to be coming to this conclusion.
My Congressman, Brian Baird who is a liberal Dem here in SW WA has been calling for the killing of Sea Lions at Bonneville Dam for quite a while. He's taken a lot of flak from the moonbat lefties for it.
Good start.
One wonder how many they kill per year ?
Normally the seals do not even eat all of the fish ?
Fly Fishing is a true addiction.
When our older son was flying back to visit the lady, who is now his wife, his younger brother asked him if he took one of his travel fly rods.
When the older bro said no, the younger one told us, this was a serious situation. The older bro and his lady friend were married in the next year. It was serious.
The sea lions and seals situation on the left coast is out of control.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.