Posted on 04/01/2006 9:32:15 AM PST by Daralundy
A particularly crafty sea lion is befuddling the Army Corps of Engineers, who have come to believe the 1,000-pound mammal is either from hell — or from Harvard.
The sea lion and his ilk have been camping out at the base of the Bonneville Dam and munching chinook salmon trying to migrate up the Columbia River to spawn.
Last year they ate about 3.5 percent of the migrating run at a time when salmon numbers were down and demand was up. This year's run begins in earnest in April.
One particular sea lion — named C404 because of a brand applied by a state and federal program — is in a class by himself. He has figured out how to get into fish ladders that help fish past the dam — where endangered salmon and other fish become his easy prey.
The engineers have used everything legal to get rid of him. They have installed gates and tried huge firecrackers, rockets, rubber bullets, and noises sea lions don't like.
But C404 has given them the flipper.
The California sea lion and his kind aren't endangered, but a 1972 federal law protects them. Incorrigibles, however, can be singled out for "lethal removal" through a long, complicated process, said Robert Stansell, a fish biologist with the Corps at Bonneville, about 40 miles east of Portland.
In the 1990s, for instance, a group of sea lions that nearly wiped out a winter steelhead run at the Ballard Locks in Seattle was marked for death, he said. But after a Humane Society lawsuit and President Clinton urged clemency, the worst were packed off to Sea World in Orlando, Fla.
Stansell said C404 has been showing up at Bonneville each year since at least 2003 and has learned to rub it in. Last year he appeared in a window where fish counters keep track of salmon migrating upstream. The data help predict the size of future runs.
"He even rolled over a little so we could get a look at his brand," Stansell said.
The chinook salmon run peaks in about September, but the sea lions head back to southern California breeding grounds around late May when the water temperature in the river rises.
But Stansell said the animals are showing up earlier and in greater numbers, and they are staying later. Now they have begun crawling onto the rocks to rest.
"They're becoming comfortable here," he said.
To shoo the sea lions from the dam, the engineers intend to keep trying the same tactics they've used with little success so far.
They'll also use firecrackers and the like on any newcomers, in hopes of dissuading them from joining the picnickers at Bonneville.
In the meantime, C404 is gaining notoriety for his savvy and liveliness.
"If he were in a litter of puppies," Stansell said, "he's the one you would pick."
Keep giving them the flipper, old boy!
Not much difference IMO.
Harvard is not synonymous with intelligence. There are numerous examples to go around.
"Not much difference IMO."
Is that you Lawrence?
How many thousands of dollars have been wasted on this animal?
Shoot the thing and be done. Damn, we have become a nation of nancy-boy pu$$ies.
Sea lions are in zero danger of extinction.I would have these sea lions killed before more come an make a larger nuisance. Head shot with a .50 caliber sniper rifle should do it painlessly
We are treating these sea lions the way the French treated the rioting Muslims..... doing nothing
Let him be. It's not like he's endangering humans, as a bear or big cat might.
It is funny that when we are spineless with God's oafish creatures, they act just like humans under no threat of consequences.
In contrast, when humans hunt a given species, that group becomes very cautious. Geese are known for pooping up lakefront property, until hunting season starts. Then they disappear completely, only to come back and manure the shore.
No sweat. Just toss in an orca...
A 30-06 round ought to take care of this little problem.
Liberals are retarded.
Yipes!
Aww how cute. I guess the Army Corps of Engineers has to think harder and be smarter then the sea lion. They shouldnt hurt the sea lion, maybe move it.
I'd love to read this what's his name?
His name is Gregg Herrington and he writes for The Columbian in Vancouver, WA. His column is in the Friday paper.
Thanks. I'll try to find it.
I was just getting the Web address, should have thought of it before, sorry.
www.columbian.com/
I'll do this one more time. I'm not very literate with a computer as you might be able to tell. Here's the link to the article. :-)
http://www.columbian.com/opinion/news/03312006news17370.cfm
Friday, March 31, 2006
GREGG HERRINGTON Columbian staff writer Advertisement
Who said the following?
"Our worry is that their behavior encourages the same behavior by others. There is something to be said for trying to deter a few aggressive individuals early on."
A. In the 1953 movie "Stalag 17," a German army officer at a POW camp talking about rebellious U.S. inmates.
B. Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, famous for using dogs in his groundbreaking research on conditioned responses, discussing a troublesome German shepherd.
C. The late William Dunn, principal from 1930 to 1957 at the old Shumway Jr. High School (now Vancouver School of Arts and Academics) and one of the county's strictest and best school administrators, as quoted in his Columbian retirement story.
D. A spokesman for a federal fisheries agency discussing sea lions that gather just downstream of Bonneville Dam and devour salmon and sturgeon.
D it is. And I say shoot a few of the slippery fish-slurping sea lions and see if that doesn't deter the rest of 'em.
"We are seeing increasingly aggressive sea lions in larger and larger numbers" at Bonneville Dam and even farther upstream, said Brian Gorman of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries division in Seattle. "Ten or 12 years ago it was unheard of to have sea lions near the dams. Now we get hundreds."
The ravenous sea lions are protected under the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, which makes it nearly impossible to get a permit to pick off a few.
So, authorities spin their wheels trying just about everything short of rifles, including underwater noisemakers, rubber bullets and bad-tasting dead fish. None of it works, at least not for long. And don't even suggest catching the critters live and hauling them away. In the late 1990s, three sea lions that had been feeding on steelhead at Seattle's Ballard Locks were captured, outfitted with tiny radio transmitters and trucked 900 miles to Monterey Bay, Calif.
"Within three or four weeks they were back," Gorman said.
"The law does not allow much flexibility in letting authorities deal with the situation," he said when asked about using rifles. "There are provisions for killing nuisance animals, but it is a convoluted, time-consuming process."
Then, putting on his philosopher's hat, Gorman said, "The sea lions are just doing what nature tells them to do. The irony is lost on fishermen that the sea lions are doing what the fishermen want to do," which is kill salmon.
Irony schmirony. The salmon and sturgeon may well be headed for extinction, but the sea lions are not.
They kill seagulls, don't they?
Did you know we, the taxpayers, already kill salmon-feeding seagulls?
"We use shooting as one small aspect of our efforts to keep gulls from feeding on migrant salmon and steelhead smolts on the way downstream," said Roger Woodruff, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Washington-Alaska director. "They take 8 to 10 percent of the smolts" at some dams.
He said "a couple of thousand" gulls are shot every year on the Columbia and Snake rivers, although none in the past two years at the three lower dams. "Over time, we have trained these gulls to forage somewhere else. Each year, there have been fewer and fewer."
Fishing guide Duane Huber of Carson in Skamania County (RiverRunGS aol.com) isn't just wringing his hands. He has collected some 5,000 signatures so far in his effort to get the states and Congress to do something.
As for the sea lions, consider what Dan Edge of the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission said at a meeting in February: "We wouldn't have to lethally take very many animals before the other ones would figure it out."
Gregg Herrington's column of personal opinion appears on the Other Opinions page each Friday. Reach him at gregg.herrington@columbian.com.
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