PORTLAND — State officials warned Monday that if California sea lions continue feeding below Willamette Falls, they could push winter steelhead trout to the brink of extinction.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reports that the state Department of Fish and Wildlife highlighted the threat in a population feasibility study. Without federal intervention, they said, there’s an 89 percent probability that least one population of the iconic fish species will go extinct in the near future.
“It’s pretty dire,” Shaun Clements, the agency’s senior fish policy adviser said in an interview from a Clackamas County park just down river from the state’s largest waterfall, where sea lions have been setting up shop around the time the trout try to make their trek to spawning grounds up river. “If we don’t deal with this near-term risk, there might not be fish,” he said.
The state’s report comes as two Pacific Northwest congressional leaders are trying to give Oregon and Washington broader authority to kill sea lions at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. The bill would also apply to the sea lion logjam at Willamette Falls in Oregon City.
