Can’t Save Salmon by Scapegoating Sea Lions

In February, the House Committee on Natural Resources held an oversight hearing on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The discussion largely served as a platform for the committee’s majority leadership to disparage these bedrock environmental laws and complain of “regulatory overreach.” 

Concomitant attacks at the state level are also on the rise. That same month, AWI submitted testimony urging the Washington State Legislature’s House Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee to reject HJM 4004, a resolution calling for federal rollbacks to the MMPA. HJM 4004 seeks to encourage a weakening of MMPA protections under the guise of increasing the “flexibility” of adaptive management tools—which really means trying to give Columbia River Basin salmon a boost by killing more sea lions.

The resolution paints pinnipeds as a primary driver of salmon declines while ignoring far more significant threats to salmon, such as non-native fish stocked for sport fishing (which eat young salmon, outcompete them for resources, and transmit disease), industrial fisheries (which remove far more salmon than pinnipeds ever could), and dams and culverts (which degrade spawning habitat and create fish migration bottlenecks). The MMPA already allows for targeted lethal removal of pinnipeds under specific circumstances. Rather than killing more pinnipeds, a focus on the actual drivers of salmon decline is needed.

Program Terms: Marine Wildlife

AWI Quarterly Terms: Government/Legal, Quick Read