Ken Bouley: Killing sea lions won’t save salmon. Fixing rivers will

Killing sea lions won’t save salmon. Fixing rivers will.

Once again, lawmakers are promoting a familiar and misguided idea: that killing seals and sea lions will somehow rescue struggling salmon runs. It is an argument that resurfaces whenever salmon numbers fall – and one that consistently ignores science and history.

In December 2025, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries held a hearing focused on “sea lion predation” in the Pacific Northwest. The hearing, led by Republican leadership, emphasized expanding lethal removal of pinnipeds in the Columbia River Basin as a supposed tool for salmon recovery. Earlier in the year, members of Congress questioned whether the Marine Mammal Protection Act itself stands in the way of protecting salmon. At the state level, similar proposals in Washington aim to weaken federal protections for seals and sea lions in Puget Sound.

Together, these efforts point to a troubling pattern: When salmon decline, native predators are blamed – while the human causes of the crisis are sidelined.

The science is clear. Seals and sea lions are not the primary reason salmon are in trouble. They never have been. These species evolved alongside salmon and have coexisted for thousands of years. What changed was not predation, but the rivers themselves.

Dams block migration routes, slow rivers, raise water temperatures, and sever salmon from the cold, complex habitats they depend on to spawn and rear. Habitat loss, polluted runoff, over-allocated water, and climate change compound the damage. These are the dominant limiting factors for salmon recovery, and they are overwhelmingly human-caused.

Focusing on pinnipeds distracts from this reality. Removing predators does nothing to restore river function, improve water quality, or reconnect floodplains. It may offer a simple political narrative, but it does not offer a solution.

California’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale. Salmon declines here have tracked closely with habitat destruction, water diversions, and dams – not with the presence of marine mammals. Where rivers have been restored and barriers removed, salmon have shown the ability to rebound. Where habitat remains fragmented and degraded, they continue to struggle.

Calls to weaken the Marine Mammal Protection Act are especially concerning. Enacted in 1972, the MMPA is one of the most successful wildlife conservation laws in U.S. history. It reversed catastrophic declines in seals, sea lions, whales, and dolphins by establishing a national commitment to science-based management and ecosystem health. The recovery of pinniped populations is evidence that the law works – not that it should be dismantled.

Rolling back these protections would not fix what is broken for salmon. Instead, it would reopen the door to politically driven wildlife management while leaving the real drivers of decline untouched.

Some lawmakers now claim that expanded lethal control proves they “care about salmon.” But as California Rep. Jared Huffman has pointed out, it rings hollow to profess concern for salmon while undermining habitat restoration programs, environmental protections, and tribal treaty rights. You cannot recover salmon without healthy rivers, and you cannot rebuild rivers without sustained investment and respect for tribal sovereignty.

Salmon recovery is hard work. It requires confronting the legacy of dams, restoring floodplains, protecting cold-water refuges, and allowing rivers to function as living systems. It also requires honesty about the causes of decline – and the political will to address them.

Killing seals and sea lions may satisfy calls for quick action, but it will not bring salmon back. Fixing rivers will. And until our policies reflect that truth, salmon will continue to pay the price for our unwillingness to face the real problem.

Ken Bouley, of Inverness, California, is the executive director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network (seaturtles.org), whose program the Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (seaturtles.org/spawn/) has been working to restore wild salmon population for just under three decades.