Sea lions at Bonneville
- Reports show sea lions are preying on Columbia River salmon at Bonneville Dam, impacting endangered population segments. (x.com) - Coverage highlights calls to change the Marine Mammal Protection Act to address escalating predation at the dam. (x.com) - Managers, advocates, and policymakers are debating potential responses as predation pressure intersects with vulnerable salmon ESUs. (x.com)
Sea lions at Bonneville Dam are eating Columbia River salmon and steelhead at a choke point where many of the fish are already protected as threatened or endangered. (public.crohms.org) The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said its 2024 monitoring found sea lions consumed an estimated 2.8% of salmon and 3.8% of steelhead counted at the dam during the spring season. The report covered fall 2023 and spring 2024 monitoring in the Bonneville tailrace. (public.crohms.org; columbiabasinbulletin.org) Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife says the problem has persisted since the early 2000s and that sea lions at Bonneville have consumed thousands of migrating fish, including runs listed under the Endangered Species Act. The agency says nonlethal hazing alone did not stop predation from rising. (wdfw.wa.gov) The fight is now centered on the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the federal law that generally bars killing or harassing sea lions. Congress loosened Section 120 in December 2018 so states and tribes could remove more problem animals in the Columbia basin, including Steller sea lions for the first time. (wdfw.wa.gov) NOAA Fisheries’ current summary says managers removed 230 sea lions under the Columbia River Basin permit from fall 2020 through spring 2025, including 45 in the 2024-25 season. NOAA updated that page on January 21, 2026, and listed two additional removals under the new 2025-30 permit. (fisheries.noaa.gov) State managers say those removals have started to reduce sea lion presence at Bonneville and have saved tens of thousands of salmon. Animal-protection critics and some advocates counter that people, dams, habitat loss, and warming water remain the larger drivers of salmon declines. (wdfw.wa.gov; dailyuw.com) The issue reached Capitol Hill on February 26, 2025, when the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries held an oversight hearing on the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. That hearing put sea lion predation and salmon recovery in the same policy debate. (congress.gov) The latest push is coming from Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, who asked the Commerce Department for broader federal action on removals. KGW reported this week that she wrote that “nearly one-fourth of fish at Bonneville Dam show wounds from sea lion bites” during the 2025 spring season. (kgw.com) What happens next is likely to turn on how far NOAA, the states, tribes, and Congress are willing to go under the existing law — or whether they try to change it again. At Bonneville, the basic conflict has not changed: one protected animal is feeding on another at the narrowest part of the river. (fisheries.noaa.gov; wdfw.wa.gov)
