Steller sea lion population to be removed from threatened species list

For only the second time in the history of the Endangered Species Act, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration has removed a species from the list of threatened and endangered species.

The agency announced Wednesday that the eastern population of Steller sea lions, which roams the Pacific Ocean close to shores from northern California to southeast Alaska, will lose ESA protection.

"We're delighted to see the recovery of the eastern population of Steller sea lions," Jim Balsiger, administrator of NOAA Fisheries' Alaska Region, said. "We'll be working with the states and other partners to monitor this population to ensure its continued health."

According to a March 2008 recovery plan, de-listing of the eastern population would occur if it grew at an average annual rate of three percent for 30 years. That recovery plan asserted a pace of growth equal or greater to that rate since the 1970s.

NOAA said in a statement that, as of 2010, there were more than 70,000 individuals in the eastern population of Steller sea lions.The endangered western population has not only failed to experience anything approaching consistent growth in size, but lost about three-quarters of its size between the late 1970s and the late 1990s.

The estimated census of the combined populations exceeded 250,000 during the 1950s.

De-listing of the population of Eumetopias jubatus nearest to the historic spawning grounds of imperiled Pacific salmonid species will give federal and state agencies more flexibility to kill the animals, which are especially prone to eat salmon migrating up the Columbia River.

The population will remain protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. However, a federal appeals court ruled Sept. 27 that the MMPA would not be violated if slightly fewer than 100 sea lions per year are killed below Bonneville Dam as a way of protecting migrating anadromous fish.

Steller sea lions were first listed under the ESA in Nov. 1990. The eastern population and its western counterpart, which is found roughly from central and southwestern Alaska west to Russia, was recognized in May 1997.

Graphic courtesy NOAA Fisheries.

De-listing of the eastern population of Steller sea lions takes effect Nov. 22.

NOAA removed a population of gray whales from the list of threatened and endangered species in 1994.

Photo courtesy NOAA Fisheries.

Federal appeals court okays effort to kill sea lions to save salmon

A federal appeals court has rejected an effort to prevent the National Marine Fisheries Service from killing California sea lions near Bonneville Dam as part of a program to conserve imperiled Pacific salmon species.

The decision likely brings to an end a dispute that has been ongoing since 2008. The administration of former President George W. Bush had authorized the states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington to annually kill a maximum of either 85 sea lions or "the number required to reduce the observed predation rate to 1 percent of the salmonid run at Bonneville Dam."

The National Marine Fisheries Service granted the necessary permission based on a clause of the Marine Mammal Protection Act that allows killing of pinnipeds that interfere with the recovery of species included on the federal list of threatened and endangered species.

The Humane Society of the United States challenged the approval, arguing that NMFS had not adequately explained the basis of its decision that sea lions should be killed as an impediment to salmon conservation and that the agency had also failed to justify the maximum number of kills allowed.

In 2010 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that NMFS had not provided a sufficient explanation for its belief that a salmon predation rate of one percent should trigger section 120(a) of the MMPA. The opinion pointed to earlier federal government decisions that would allow fishers to take more of the population of protected Columbia River salmon each year than would sea lions.
 
The court also ruled in its 2010 decision that NMFS had not adequately explained why killing of sea lions would be permissible as an interference with salmon recovery when the agency was simultaneously willing to tolerate the killing of a greater percentage of the runs by hydroelectric dams and fishing.

The agency, upon reconsideration, limited the annual take of sea lions to 92 individuals per year and committed to a review of the decision to authorize the program after five years. NMFS also adopted a qualitative, as opposed to a quantitative, standard as justification for the kill authorization.

HSUS and the Wild Fish Conservancy filed another lawsuit against the program in March 2012. U.S. District Judge Michael Simon decided in May 2012 not to issue a preliminary injunction that would block NMFS from carrying it out. 

The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion announced Sept. 27, affirmed Simon's ruling, holding that NMFS had complied with both MMPA and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Hatcheries and birds also kill more protected salmon on the Columbia River each year than do sea lions.

A 2012 report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated that the annual toll of salmon lost to California sea lions at Bonneville Dam is about 0.6 percent of the run.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

Note: This article also appears at Examiner.com.

GAO Report Says Bush Didn't Protect Marine Mammals

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released today concludes that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) (now NOAA Fisheries) has not protected marine mammals from incidental injury or death resulting from commercial fishing activities.

Marine mammals that inhabit waters near commercial fishing can become entangled in fishing gear, often referred to as "incidental take." The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) requires the NMFS to establish teams comprised of experts from the scientific community and the fishing industry to devise methods to reduce interactions between certain marine mammals and commercial fishing activities in an effort to prevent incidental deaths of these species.

The GAO report found that NMFS has failed to establish those teams for nearly half of the marine mammal stocks afforded protection under the MMPA, leaving these species severally jeopardized by commercial fishing activities. The agency also lacks a comprehensive process to evaluate the effectiveness of the methods proposed by teams that have been established.

The GAO report is here.