Sea lions feasting on salmon at Bonneville Dam will stay out of the cross hairs at least until March and potentially permanently, federal fisheries officials announced Wednesday.
The National Marine Fisheries Service announced that it won’t appeal a November ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
A three-judge panel ruled that officials must explain how it’s OK to kill a natural predator while allowing human fishermen to inadvertently kill an equal or greater proportion of wild fish. The ruling, which overturned a lower-court decision, effectively blocked a waiver to the Marine Mammal Protection Act issued by the fisheries service in early 2008.
Federal officials had considered appealing the 9th Circuit’s decision, which was issued Nov. 23.
“The bottom line is we’re not going to work any further through the court process,” said Garth Griffin, a federal fisheries biologist overseeing the lethal-removal permit. “We understand what the court said, and they gave us guidance.”
He said the agency will conduct a new analysis of sea lion predation at the dam.
“We won’t have our new determination made until probably March,” Griffin said. “Nothing will happen between now and then.”
He added that Washington and Oregon wildlife authorities will be free to use nonlethal hazing to scatter sea lions feasting on salmon and sturgeon at the man-made bottleneck 143 miles upriver from the Pacific Ocean. The hulking pinnipeds followed an unusually large run of spring chinook in 2001, and they’ve returned each year since.
State officials are optimistic federal authorities will satisfy the court’s concern and reissue the lethal-removal permit, said Guy Norman, regional administrator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Vancouver.
State and federal authorities say they’ve invested heavily in habitat restoration, costly operational changes to dams and reductions in fishing to conserve imperiled wild salmon in the Columbia River basin.
Non-lethal hazing has been ineffective in reducing sea lion predation, officials said.
Norman said ignoring the problem “can have the effect of countering some of the other actions we’re taking and the investments from people up and down the basin.”
Sea lions usually begin to appear at the dam in February.
NMFS had permitted state game agents to kill nuisance animals eating wild salmon, which are protected by the Endangered Species Act. The permit authorized the states to remove as many as 85 nuisance animals per year.
Wildlife agents have captured and euthanized 22 animals and relocated 10 sea lions to zoos or aquariums since the program began.
