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3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2018 Sea lion shuttle not a solution at Willamette Falls mates it saved two to three fish from getting eaten. Multiply that by 10 for each of the sea lions they moved, Clements said, and the number of fish that weren’t eaten by sea lions starts to add up. “We did save some steel- head from predation,” Clem- ents said. “Sixty days of two fish each a day, that’s 120 fish. That’s something” Plus, he said, now they have the traps and the barge system ready to go to lethally remove sea lions should they get per- mission from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. State wants the power to kill By CASSANDRA PROFITA Oregon Public Broadcasting Threatened winter steel- head will start making their way up the Willamette River to their spawning grounds in November, and half a dozen sea lions are already waiting to eat them at Willamette Falls. Managers with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wild- life have asked for permis- sion to kill these sea lions to save the fish. They don’t have an answer yet, but thanks to a sea lion shuffle earlier this year, they’re ready to go should they get the approval. Last year, sea lions at Wil- lamette Falls ate a quarter of a winter steelhead run that was already down to about 500 fish. At that rate, biologists say, the run is at risk of extinction. Oregon has permission to kill sea lions to protect fish at Bonneville Dam, where 29 sea lions were lethally removed last year. But they don’t have that option at Willamette Falls, about 10 miles south of Port- land where the river divides Oregon City from West Linn. Without authority to kill the sea lions at Willamette Falls, fishery managers got creative. The state trapped and relo- cated about a dozen sea lions in two cages on a dock below Willamette Falls between Feb- ruary and April. In many of those cases, Bryan Wright, who leads the Trucking sea lions and salmon Cassandra Profita/Oregon Public Broadcasting The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has installed two sea lion traps below Willa- mette Falls that could one day be used to lethally remove the animals to protect threat- ened fish. department’s marine mammal program, would hide out of sight at dusk until he saw a sea lion jump into the trap. Then, he’d press a button and a heavy cage door would slam shut. Once the sea lions were trapped, Wright and other wildlife managers shooed them from the dock to a barge to a pickup truck – and then drove them 200 miles away to Newport. “So, now we’re trans- ferring the animal from the barge to the truck,” Wright explained from behind the wheel of a pickup truck as a team of workers banged on the walls of the barge with poles. “Usually you have to use a little bit of noise, tapping A walk through the trees the stick, prodding them a lit- tle bit.” The sea lions weren’t exactly eager to hop into a cage on the back of a truck, and Wright wasn’t exactly thrilled to be behind the wheel. “It’s not something any- body does every day,” he said. “You have this 400- to 600- pound sea lion in the back, and nobody really knows, you know, driving by what we have back there. The first time I did it I was a bit white knuckled for the whole trip.” Sea lions swim right back Even as he was releasing these sea lions, Wright knew it was just a matter of time before they swam right back. One sea lion made the 230- mile trip in just four days. Another one swam back and got trapped a second time, so he got two trips to the coast. Shaun Clements, a state fisheries manager, said clearly driving the sea lions to the coast was not a solution to the prob- lem. But it is one of their only options for protecting the fish while they wait for approval to kill the sea lions. “In the meantime, we felt we had to do something because the run is so poor and the sea lion population is get- ting bigger,” he said. For every day the relo- cated sea lions weren’t at Wil- lamette Falls, the agency esti- But killing sea lions won’t solve all the problems these fish are facing. The salmon and steelhead that do make it over the falls — without getting eaten by sea lions — still have 12 dams standing in the way of their spawning grounds. None of those dams have fish ladders — a stair step- like series of pools that allows fish to make their way up and around a river’s towering dam. “So right now what you see in essence is a huge road- block for these fish in both directions,” said Jennifer Fairbrother with the Native Fish Society, an environmen- tal group that sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over dam management in the Wil- lamette River basin. “The big nut to crack is how do we help these fish get around the dams both as they go downstream as juveniles and as they come back to spawn?” Right now, dam manag- ers have to help adult fish get around the dams by collect- ing them in a holding tank that drains into a truck. The truck drives the fish around the dam and dumps them out upstream. Sea lions aren’t the only wildlife getting trucked around Oregon. More than half the salmon in the Willa- mette River basin — tens of thousands of fish — get driven around dams every year. It’s the only way they’ll make it. The dams were built for flood control, and dam manag- ers says they’re too tall for reg- ular fish ladders and spillways. “In a perfect world, we’d have a ladder where we didn’t have to trap and handle fish,” said Greg Taylor, fisheries biologist with the Army Corps. “Everybody wants that. But it’s not a tool that’s available to us at this point. It’s not there.” While dam managers puz- zle over better options, sea lions are eating more and more of the fish downstream. Clements says the only option left is to kill the sea lions to save the fish — before it’s too late. “It’s a pretty simple equa- tion for the winter steelhead right now,” he said. “Their numbers are so low. They’re losing so many here at the falls, that if we don’t do this they’re going to go extinct.” The Department of Fish and Wildlife is expecting a decision on its application to lethally remove sea lions from Willa- mette Falls by the end the year. West Coast earthquake warning system becomes operational Associated Press PASADENA, Calif. — Developers testing an earth- quake early warning system for the West Coast say its automated alerts are ready to be used more broadly, but not for mass public notification. U.S. Geological Survey official Doug Given told reporters Wednesday at Cal- ifornia Institute of Technol- ogy that the ShakeAlert sys- tem has transitioned from a production prototype to operational mode. The system being built for California, Oregon and Washington state detects an earthquake is occurring and send out alerts that may give warnings of few seconds to perhaps a minute before shaking arrives at locations away from the epicenter. Select industries, utili- ties, schools and other enti- ties have been using Shake- Alert for years, and officials say it can be used more widely. Officials say, however, that cellphone technology is too slow for mass alerts. WANTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500 The Haunted Cove Katie Frankowicz/The Daily Astorian Attendees of Clatsop County’s 28th Annual Communi- ty Leaders Forestry Tour stopped on state-owned land Wednesday to observe a cut-to-length thinning operation that employs modern Finnish-made machines designed to lessen the impact of heavy machinery on forests and maximize harvest. The theme of this year’s tour, which draws dozens of attendees each year, was ‘Working For- ests — More Than Just Trees.’ In addition to the thinning project, the tour also highlighted fish passage improve- ments at Hampton Lumber’s Big Creek Tree Farm. Clatsop Post 12 Spaghetti Dinner With Salad and Garlic Bread Friday, Oct. 19 th 4 pm until gone $ 8. 00 Friday & Entrance Fee: Saturday $ 3 October per person or 12th - 13th 3 19th - 20th 26th - 27th non-perishable food items 6pm - 9pm 6PM “Karaoke Dave” ASTORIA AMERICAN LEGION Clatsop Post 12 1132 Exchange Street 325-5771 j oan h erman for astoria city council ward 3 T ell m e y our C onCerns & i deas october Tuesdays @ Blue Scorcher 1493 Duane 2-3pm Thursdays (11th, 25th) @ Peter Pan Market All proceeds go to CCA Regional Food Bank & KOA Care Camps 1100 NW Ridge Rd. Hammond, OR 503-861-2606 AstoriaKOA.com Serving Breakfast and Lunch Winter Hours Open at 6 am 1410 Commercial 2-3pm Now Open for Dinner! november Saturday 3rd @ Street 14 Cafe Friday and Saturday nights until 9 pm! 712 Niagara 5-6pm Saturday 27th @ Street 14 Cafe 1410 Commercial 2-3pm P reserve H istoric A storia u S upport L ocal B usiness u A dvocate for A ffordable H ousing v alues v ision v itality u Joan for City Council, PO Box 946, Astoria 97103 u joan4ward3@gmail.com u 303 1st Avenue South, Ilwaco, Washington 360-777-3740 • travsplace.net
