Wildlife officials are tracking and euthanizing sea lions that they believe eat too many fish.
Officials in Oregon believe they have tried everything to stop sea lions from eating too many endangered salmon. They have run interferences, dropped explosives, shot rubber bullets and more in an effort to deter the swift swimming sea lion from its ferocious focus to find fish for food or at least be selective in what it eats.
Officials are currently following 63 sea lions that have been observed eating Chinook salmon and are not responding to government hazing methods. Last year, it was decided that euthanasia would be the next step for these rowdy beasts and 11 animals were put down. Four more were sent to zoos.
Sea lions were placed on the endangered or protected list in 1972. However, states are allowed an exemption.
Meanwhile, it is reported that Columbia River fisheries managers are predicting that the 2010 spring salmon run will be the largest since 1938. They said ocean conditions have been great and they expect 470,000 fish to make the spawning run compared to 169,300 last year.
So, as I understand these reports, we have two species that are on the endangered list. That means they are in danger of extinction and we humans want to stop that from happening. Currently, there are so many of each of these species that they are following their natural life cycles by running up rivers in record numbers while running a gauntlet of natural predators that have been hunting for thousands of years. Meanwhile, we will spend money and resources to track these species and try to tell them what to eat, how many and when or else we will kill them.
Seems to me that nature should be allowed to do what is natural whenever it can.
RoyBigham roy@pollutionengineering.com Roy D. Bigham has been the editor of Pollution Engineering since 2002. Bigham attended Eastern Michigan University where
he majored in chemistry and computer science with an associates degree
in mathematics. He has worked as a laboratory technician at a research
laboratory, managed an electroplating operation and an associated
analytical laboratory. He spent three years overseeing environmental
operations of five domestic and five overseas operations for a major
manufacturer in the Detroit area. He then managed a field services
department for an environmental analytical laboratory before moving on
to a position as an environmental engineer for a construction
aggregates company.
Bigham
won a design award for a waste water treatment system for a landfill in
the Detroit area from the State Chamber of Commerce. He has been active
in the environmental field since 1980.
Title: Nature versus Nurture By: Peopleperson Posted: March 12, 2010 12:01 PM
Since when did humankind start deciding that "nature" can have its way?
Okay, I know the answer to that: it was the Age of the Enlightenment, actually. But we've had a few good ideas since then, too, and one of them has to be scrapping this idea of the ultimate benevolence of "nature." If a river wants to overrun a town, do we move the town, or put up dikes?
Nature is something that we can attempt to find harmony with, to reach some sort of balance with. In fact, the first "American value" (pre-dating Jefferson by several millenia) was respect for nature and our place in it.
However, if you follow the course of human evolution, long before we had the brainpower to be cognizant of this fact, the mark of humanity has been our ability to shape the environment to fit our own needs. If you look at a map of the disappearance of large predators on this planet, it's the same map as that of human expansion. Sabre-toothed Tigers didn't just disappear because it was nature's will -- our forefathers slaughtered the competition so we could have the meat source to ourselves.
Much more recently, we culled the wolf populations of the Great Lakes Region because they were dangerous to human inhabitants. Because of it, states like Michigan now have no other way to control their deer population (who didn't stop reproducing at former replacement rates just because their primary predator disappeared) other than to let hunters do it for sport.
Likewise, our fishing industry, whose job, I remind you, is to provide food for people, needs to get rid of some competition, since we can't both share the same resource. We moved off other predators to increase our fish stocks, and sea lions moved into some of the hole we created.
If this was fishermen fighting off an endangered species for the last tuna, well, that would be one thing. But an organized effort to maintain balance is just being, well, human.
Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
By: Peopleperson
Posted: March 12, 2010 12:01 PM
Okay, I know the answer to that: it was the Age of the Enlightenment, actually. But we've had a few good ideas since then, too, and one of them has to be scrapping this idea of the ultimate benevolence of "nature." If a river wants to overrun a town, do we move the town, or put up dikes?
Nature is something that we can attempt to find harmony with, to reach some sort of balance with. In fact, the first "American value" (pre-dating Jefferson by several millenia) was respect for nature and our place in it.
However, if you follow the course of human evolution, long before we had the brainpower to be cognizant of this fact, the mark of humanity has been our ability to shape the environment to fit our own needs. If you look at a map of the disappearance of large predators on this planet, it's the same map as that of human expansion. Sabre-toothed Tigers didn't just disappear because it was nature's will -- our forefathers slaughtered the competition so we could have the meat source to ourselves.
Much more recently, we culled the wolf populations of the Great Lakes Region because they were dangerous to human inhabitants. Because of it, states like Michigan now have no other way to control their deer population (who didn't stop reproducing at former replacement rates just because their primary predator disappeared) other than to let hunters do it for sport.
Likewise, our fishing industry, whose job, I remind you, is to provide food for people, needs to get rid of some competition, since we can't both share the same resource. We moved off other predators to increase our fish stocks, and sea lions moved into some of the hole we created.
If this was fishermen fighting off an endangered species for the last tuna, well, that would be one thing. But an organized effort to maintain balance is just being, well, human.