Sea lions benefit from federal protections, but exceptions are growing as they relentlessly prey on Colombia’s fragile salmon populations.
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Congresswoman Marie Grusenkamp Perez of Washington’s 3rd District is calling on the Trump administration to expand the cull of sea lions along the Columbia River, citing predators’ voracious appetite for endangered salmon and steelhead.
Grusenkamp Perez said she recently sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who is in charge of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its fish management efforts under the Trump administration, requesting further federal action on sea lion culls.
“Sea lions ate four times as much salmon as our fishermen and tribes harvest in a year in the Columbia River. During the 2025 spring season, nearly a quarter of the fish at Bonneville Dam will have sea lion bites,” Grusenkamp Perez wrote in the letter. “We need NOAA to work closely with states and tribes to consider strategies that provide the best results for pinniped removal, including direct lethal removal.”
Sea lions are federally protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which makes it illegal to harass, hunt, or kill marine mammals. There are some exceptions that allow state and tribal authorities to remove and, in some cases, kill predatory pinnipeds.
read more: Oregon culles sea lions in fight over endangered fish
For decades, sea lions and California sea lions have migrated up the Columbia River and its tributaries to feed on fish. This includes habitat for 13 endangered species protected under the Endangered Species Act. Sea lions have come to expect that fish heading upstream to spawn will congregate at dams, waterfalls and other pinch points, making them easy prey.
This puts sea lions in direct competition with anglers in Oregon and Washington, as well as tribes in the region, which has taken a toll on declining populations.
Grusenkamp Perez argues in the letter that the conditions for sea lion removal are too onerous and expensive because they require wildlife managers to “trap these Toyota Corolla-sized creatures, remove them from the river, chemically euthanize them with a dart in the presence of a licensed veterinarian, and then transport the carcasses to a tertiary location for disposal and necropsy.”
Grusenkamp Perez said she was successful in getting language included in the Commerce, Science, and Justice Appropriations Act of 2026 directing NOAA to study “what strategies provide the best results for pinniped removal, including direct lethal removal.”
Related: Some fishermen make a decent living fishing for predators in the Columbia River.
“We ask for your cooperation with the Department to complete this evaluation,” the lawmakers wrote to Lutnick. “While this work is important, our fish and fishermen need more urgent solutions.”
Meanwhile, the lawmaker said he wants to expand the allowable area for removals from the lower Columbia River at Mile 112 (just east of Camas) to Mile 66 near Longview. The far upstream end of the removal area is McNally Dam, just past Umatilla.
“Along the Mile 66 River, in the Cowlitz River where the Lewis and Clark Bridge intersects, the water is no longer salty enough to recreate traditional sea lion habitat,” Grusenkamp Perez said. “These species don’t naturally live in water this fresh, so we should be able to start eradicating them now.”
Numbers tracked by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife through December show that there have been 505 fatal sea lion culls since culls began in 2008. Only six animals were culled in all of 2020, but that number fluctuated in subsequent years, from 26 in 2022 to a high of 67 in 2021.
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