Tag Archives: remove the sea lions

Opinion: Breach the Snake River dams? Only if you want more carbon and more expensive power

Recently our local papers have been publishing opinion pieces suggesting the possibility or necessity of removing the four lower Snake River dams to protect Idaho salmon runs. And earlier this year the Idaho Press published an article reporting that the Biden administration has released two reports stating that removal of the four dams on the lower Snake River “may be needed to restore salmon runs to sustainable levels.” There are other much cheaper alternatives that may be just as effective in preserving the salmon runs — maybe more. One would be to permanently remove the sea lions that congregate at the base of Bonneville Dam, the first dam on the Columbia River. Those sea lions decimate thousands of migrating salmon that gather around the base of the dam as they try to find the fish ladder over the dam. >click to read< 11:27

Salmon runs: Remove sea lions

Breaching the Snake River dams will not guarantee an improved salmon run. A better suggestion might be to remove the sea lions from the Columbia River and severely restrict fishing as our Canadian neighbors are doing for their Fraser River run. It is difficult for more salmon to get upstream when they are being overfished, and each sea lion consumes 15 to 40 pounds of fish per day. By John Crawford >click to read< 09:21