Corpusfishing.com

[Central Scrutinizer]

[Sorry for the epic fail on the original multiple posts - It was a website formatting issue]

Here is an interesting story about a fight between the Fed's and the tree hugger/PETA crowd. Funny stuff, once again pointing out the "Law of Unintended Consequences". Bit of a long read, but the Cliff Notes version is a protected species (marine mammal) is wrecking havoc on a threatened species (salmon), and the two groups are fighting over a equitable solution:



Protected sea lions gorge on threatened salmon

A controversial cull of California sea lions in the Columbia River to conserve salmon may leave field open for a new predator.

[img]http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.6041.1345651245!/image/PA-5306124.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_300/PA-5306124.jpg[\img]

Sea lions are devouring threatened salmon populations at the Bonneville Dam in the Columbia river.


What do you do when a charismatic marine mammal is wreaking havoc by gorging on a threatened species that humans also find delicious? That is the awkward problem faced by wildlife managers along the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon states, where sea lions have been congregating for the past decade to feast on salmon waiting to climb the fish ladders at the base of the Bonneville Dam on their spring voyage upriver to spawn.

To protect the Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in the river, some of which are listed as threatened populations, in 2008 the states of Washington and Oregon obtained permission from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Maryland, to kill California sea lions (which are normally protected) seen feeding repeatedly at the dam, after attempts to frighten the animals away proved ineffective.

In response, the Humane Society of the United States, based in Washington DC, and others filed a lawsuit to stop the practice and their legal challenges have continued. A US district court in Portland, Oregon, is expected to hear full arguments for a final ruling in the next few weeks. In the meantime, more than 40 California sea lions have been killed and 11 transferred to aquaria and zoos.

Survey data collected by the US Army Corps of Engineers during the years of the cull show that numbers of California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) are decreasing at the dam, along with the amount of salmon they eat. The corps and others attribute this to the removal programme.

Muscling in

But the cull may have been too successful. Last year, the larger Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus), which arrived in earnest at the dam in 2005 and have returned in greater numbers each year, outnumbered California sea lions for the first time and ate fully half of the predated salmon.

[Uncle D]

Spammed???

[Central Scrutinizer]

[Crash]

Its our fault for building the dams and making it easy for the sea lions.
_________________


Me and DR fishing Pita Island November 2010

[Oil Field Trash II]

But seal lions are cute and fuzzy !! And they make that "honk honk" sound and clap their fins together.

[The Trash Heap]

[Jason Slocum]

Shoot them both with toxic shot, and have fish fry , is what I would do.
I'm sure the feds will spend 20 million to study the problem, and determine a long term study is needed while both species go extinct in the mean time.

[The Trash Heap]

All kidding aside, this is hardly the first time prey and predator have been threatened with extinction, like the piping plover and the peregrine falcon. It certainly won't be the last such situation because co-evolution results in co-dependence.

This is hardly a new understanding, either:

[Bluffer]