On May, 13 2011 NOAA's Fisheries Service said it was authorizing the states of Washington and Oregon to lethally remove specific California Sea Lions that congregate 140 miles from the Pacific Ocean just below the Columbia's River's Bonneville Dam to eat thousands of adult salmon and steelhead swimming upriver to spawn. Some of the salmon and steelhead are listed as threatened or endangered. "This is not an easy decision for our agency to make, but a thorough analysis shows that a small number of California sea lions preying on salmon and steelhead are having a significant effect in the ability of the fish stocks to recover," said William W. Stelle Jr., Northwest regional administrator for NOAA's Fisheries Service. "Today's authorization allows state fisheries and natural resource agencies to carefully remove California sea lions to reduce their affects on vulnerable fish species." Like all marine mammals in U.S. waters, California sea lions are protected by federal law, but their are provisions in the Marine Mammal Protection Act that allow today's authorization. The California sea lion population on the West Coast is considered healthy and stable, and estimated to be 238,000.
I think that is was okay to safely remove these sea lions so that the salmon and steelhead could thrive, as long as they didn't harm the sea lions.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110512_sealion.html
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