3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MAY 28, 2018
Sea lions continue to eat endangered fish
Proposed bill
supported by
Northwest
lawmakers
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
All the time, money and
sacrifice to improve salmon
and steelhead passage in the
Willamette River won’t mean
a thing unless wildlife man-
agers can get rid of sea lions
feasting on the fish at Willa-
mette Falls.
That was the message Tues-
day from Shaun Clements,
senior policy adviser for the
Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife, who met at the
falls with Liz Hamilton, exec-
utive director of the Northwest
Sportfishing Industry Asso-
ciation, and Suzanne Kunse,
district director for U.S. Rep.
Kurt Schrader, D-Ore.
The group watched as sev-
eral sea lions patrolled the
waterfalls and nearby fish lad-
ders. Clements said there could
be as many as 50 to 60 sea
lions in the area on any given
day in April or early May, and
the animals are responsible for
eating roughly 20 percent of
this year’s already paltry win-
ter steelhead run.
As of May 22, ODFW
has counted just 2,086 winter
steelhead at Willamette Falls.
That’s less than half of the
10-year average and 22 per-
cent of the 50-year average.
ODFW applied in Octo-
ber 2017 to kill sea lions from
Willamette Falls under the
Marine Mammal Protection
Act, though Clements said
he does not expect a deci-
sion from the National Marine
Fisheries Service until the end
of the year.
The department also tried
relocating 10 California sea
lions to a beach south of New-
port earlier this year, only to
see the animals return in just
six days.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army
George Plaven/Capital Press
Sea lions continue to prey on salmon and steelhead at Willamette Falls in Oregon.
“Certainly for winter
steelhead, if we don’t deal
with (sea lions), whatever
we do in the upper basin
isn’t going to help.”
Shaun Clements
Senior policy advisor
for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
enough fish can even make it
past the falls.
“Certainly for winter steel-
head, if we don’t deal with
(sea lions), whatever we do
in the upper basin isn’t going
to help,” Clements said. “If
you’re managing other sectors,
you have to manage sea lions
as well.”
Schrader is co-sponsoring
legislation to provide greater
Corps of Engineers is propos-
ing to build a water tempera-
ture control tower and floating
fish screen at Detroit Dam far-
ther up the Willamette Basin to
aid salmon and steelhead sur-
vival, a project that could cost
up to $250 million and leave
farmers without water in the
reservoir for up to two years.
But Clements said it would
be a wasted investment if not
flexibility for managing sea
lions in the future. The Endan-
gered Salmon and Fisher-
ies Predation Prevention Act
would extend the authority for
killing sea lions that prey on
endangered salmon and steel-
head to states and tribes.
The bill has support from a
bipartisan group of Northwest
lawmakers, including Reps.
Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan
Newhouse of Washington, and
Rep. Don Young of Alaska, all
Republicans.
Clements said the Marine
Mammal Protection Act —
which was signed into law by
President Richard Nixon in
1972 — is too restrictive the
way it is currently written, and
forces wildlife managers to
wait too long before they can
apply for a lethal take permit
to protect fish.
“By that point, you’re
already having a really bad
impact,” he said. “We want to
stop the habituation here.”
Hamilton, with the North-
west Sportfishing Industry
Association, said she remem-
bers fishing on the Willamette
River and it would be a shock
to see a single sea lion.
The problem, Hamilton
said, has really sprung over the
last 10 years. It is especially
problematic in places like Wil-
lamette Falls, where fish are
essentially bottled up trying to
maneuver upstream to spawn.
“Think about what the basin
has done for these steelhead,”
Hamilton said. “After 10 years
of pretty heavy pounding from
the sea lions, it’s all gone down
the barrel.”
If ODFW can have the tools
to deal with sea lions more
proactively, and not when
steelhead runs are at the brink
of extinction, she said they will
have been successful.
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