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June 1999 Vegetarian Alert: Feds Seek to Kill Seals and Sea Lions By Jack Rosenberger

The National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) wants to kill. More specifically, it wants to kill California sea lions and Pacific Harbor seals. Of course, the NMFS doesn’t describe its murderous intent as bluntly as I do. Its preferred lingo is “lethal removal.”

California sea lions and Pacific Harbor seals are among the most fortunate of the nonhuman animals who reside in this great nation. Since 1972, these majestic sea mammals have largely been protected from human-inflicted injury and death by the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). As a result, California sea lions and Pacific Harbor seals have enjoyed significant and much-needed population increases. The NMFS, however, is pressing Congress to gut the MMPA so its agents, and others, can bludgeon to death or gun down “excess” and “nuisance” California sea lions and Pacific Harbor seals.

If you enjoy the language and style of government reports, get hold of the NMFS’s “Impacts of California Sea Lions and Pacific Harbor Seals on Salmonids and Western Coast Ecosystems” (it and related material can be found at the NMFS’s web site: www.nwr.noaa.gov). In “Impacts,” the NMFS proposes three situations in which it argues for lethal removal.

The first reason for NMFS’s campaign to drastically downsize the MMPA is that sea lions and seals dine on salmon. Salmon population levels are declining to perilous levels while the population levels of seals and sea lions, also known as pinnipeds, are rising steadily. To possibly save the salmon, the fisheries service suggests that some pinnipeds must be culled. This is a nice argument, yet the NMFS admits in its own report to Congress that no one has demonstrated “a cause-effect relationship between increases in pinniped numbers and declines in salmonid populations.” Moreover, the fisheries service acknowledges that it is not greedy seals and sea lions but human activity–such as fishing, river-crippling dams, and habitat destruction–that is largely responsible for the salmon’s continuing decline.

The second reason the fisheries service wants the MMPA amended so California sea lions and Pacific Harbor seals can be killed is that they interfere with recreational or commercial fishing. Yes, seals stalk recreational fishing boats and steal bait. Yes, sea lions invade docks and devour fish. However, commercial fisheries commonly report the amount of damage caused by sea lions and seals as a single-digit loss.

Finally, the NMFS wants human animals to possess the option of summary execution when seals and sea lions persistently intrude upon a human space such as a boat or a marina dock. The main purpose of the MMPA is to restore the populations of threatened animals like salmon, seals, and sea lions. The NMFS is unsure if “either [sea lion or seal] populations [have] reached [their] optimum sustainable population (OSP) level.” Yet it wants to start culling them.

Please challenge the federal government’s proposed expansion of its war against nonhuman animals. Contact: William Stelle, Jr., Regional Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115. In Washington, you could voice your opinion to the man who may be our next president, Al Gore, (The White House, Washington, DC 20500), or to your congressional representative (US House of Representatives, Washington DC 20515; U.S. Senate, Washington DC 20510; congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121).

Some points you may want to mention are: that the proposed amendments are speciesist (no government agency would propose that “nuisance” humans be lethally removed); that the use of lethal force is extreme and unjustified by the circumstances; that nonlethal deterrents should be more fully investigated; and that the practice of “permanent captivity” should be banned.