State Gets Permission To Kill Sea Lions
It may be all over for Hondo.
The federal government gave the state permission Wednesday to kill sea lions observed feeding on rare steelhead as the fish try to swim through the Ballard locks on their way upstream to spawn.
Under guidelines prepared by the National Marine Fisheries Service, the state can begin killing the big sea mammals Saturday, with Hondo - also known as No. 17 - one of five possible candidates.
In a letter to the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, the fisheries service said the state may kill any “predatory” sea lion that has a history of eating steelhead, is oblivious to underwater noisemakers and is seen hunting the fish this season.
A sea lion must meet all three criteria before it can be considered for lethal removal, said Joe Scordino, acting deputy director of the NMFS’ Northwest Region.
“Lethal removal is the solution of last resort. We’ve tried a whole number of non-lethal approaches over the past 10 years,” Scordino said.
“The bottom line is not that they don’t work, it’s that they don’t work on certain animals. That’s the target of this whole action.”
The new authorization modifies rules set in 1994. The state no longer has to temporarily hold a sea lion before killing it. The state also does not have to wait until the sea lion take meets a previously set predation-rate “trigger” of at least 10 percent of steelhead passing through the locks in a seven-day period.
So far, none of the sea lions that prey on steelhead at the locks has been killed.
An Animal Care Committee, made up of veterinarians, marine-mammal caretakers and federal and state marine-mammal biologists, will develop protocols for euthanizing the sea lions, the NMFS letter said.
In the past, NMFS and the state have tried a range of methods to control sea lion predation, including installing barriers and changing water flows at the locks, shooting the animals with rubber-tipped arrows, feeding them bad-tasting fish and setting off firecrackers. Some animals were captured and sent to California - and still made their way back.
Scordino said removing the sea lions returns them to the locks “bigger, smarter, oblivious to acoustic-deterrent devices and a model for other less-experienced sea lions.”
Animal-rights groups say NMFS is unfairly targeting sea lions and that lethal removal does not get to the root of the problem, which involves the entire regional ecology.
The Humane Society of the United States plans to file a lawsuit challenging the plan. The Progressive Animal Welfare Society and Earth Island Institute were to join in the complaint, to be filed this week in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Biologists blame the sea lions for a dramatic drop in the number of steelhead returning to spawn over the past decade. This year, only 33 steelhead have been counted at the locks, and scientists predict the total run will number fewer than 150 fish.