None will be killed yet, due to a last-minute ruling Wednesday by a federal appeals court.

But for the first time, Washington and Oregon fish and wildlife officials are now allowed to pluck the salmon-munching mammals from the wild and ship them off to Sea World and elsewhere.

So far, the states say they’ve found new homes for up to 20 sea lions. They’ll be able to permanently remove up to eight Thursday.

Under current law, the states are allowed to remove up to 85 a year, but don’t expect to capture that many eligible sea lions before the season ends.

“Those things will be gone out of there in another month,” said Karl Anderson of Vancouver, a sport fisherman.

Dozens of California sea lions, native to the region, scoop about 50 to 100 chinook salmon from the base of the Bonneville Dam each day. The annual salmon run is nearing its peak.

Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle, said 30 sea lions were seen at the dam on Wednesday, and that 63 appeared on a single day two weeks ago.

Sea lions consumed at least 4 percent of returning spring Chinook salmon last year, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. One California sea lion usually eats about seven salmon a day.

By comparison, sport, commercial and tribal fishing harvested 14 percent of last year’s run on the upper Columbia River.

Ninth Circuit ruling blocks killings

Killing the mammals isn’t allowed because on Wednesday the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco blocked lethal action for the spring at the request of the Humane Society of the United States.

The society argues that fishing, farming, logging, mining and damming of the river, not sea lions, are mostly to blame for the falling salmon population.

The Humane Society opposes trapping and relocation as well as killing, spokeswoman Sharon Young said Wednesday.

The San Francisco-based appeals court will hear argument on the merits of the case May 8. A final ruling could happen months after that.
Sea lions typically leave the dam by late May.

In granting Wednesday’s injunction, a three-judge court panel said that “the lethal taking of California sea lions is, by definition, irreparable” and therefore probably forbidden under the 1972 Marine Mammals Protection Act.

A filing by the appeals court clerk Wednesday said the case is being considered for a mediation program and gave both sides 14 days to say whether they think that would be appropriate.

Some sea lions will remain

Since 2006, workers have used the floating traps to grab and brand sea lions for shipment to Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia. But they haven’t been allowed to take them away from the river entirely, until now.

To be eligible for removal today, a sea lion must have already been captured, branded, released, “hazed” -- blasted by rubber bullets, razzed by firecrackers and so forth -- and then have returned to Bonneville’s fish feast the following year, despite the harassment.

“These are the ones that are coming up again year after year because they know a good thing,” said Rick Hargrave, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

About 20 to 25 people will be involved in today’s operation, including crane operators with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Hargrave said.

Guy Norman, director of the regional office of Washington’s DFW, said the states had been planning since last Friday to begin trapping today.
If they’d wanted to, he said, they might have begun killing earlier this week. But they wanted to do that only as a last resort.

“If we had an opportunity to relocate these animals, we thought that was the right thing to do,” Norman said.

As it is, the states might stop trapping as the result of another court ruling, or when they run out of zoos willing to take the mammals, or when the sea lions leave for the winter.

Captured sea lions tagged for removal will be loaded into horse trailers, driven to a temporary holding space before being flown to zoos in Brownsville, Texas, and St. Louis or to one of Sea World’s locations in Florida, Texas and California.