Don’t Scapegoat Sea Lions for Human-caused Salmon Declines
At the Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (SPAWN), we have spent decades doing the hard, unglamorous work of saving salmon—restoring streams, protecting habitat, advocating for science-based policy, and standing with Tribal nations and local communities to recover our watersheds. Central to that work is our firm respect for the rights of Tribes to hunt, fish, and steward their waters—rights that are essential to any credible, large-scale salmon recovery effort.
In late 2025, the push to promote lethal control of pinnipeds as a supposed salmon recovery strategy gained renewed visibility on Capitol Hill. On December 3, 2025, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries held an oversight hearing titled “Sea Lion Predation in the Pacific Northwest.” Led by Republican leadership, the hearing focused heavily on increasing the removal of sea lions in the Columbia River Basin, even as scientists and conservation groups reiterated that predation is not the primary limiting factor for salmon and steelhead. Instead, habitat loss—particularly from dams and degraded rivers—remains the far greater threat.
Earlier in February 2025, the House Committee on Natural Resources held an oversight hearing on the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), during which some lawmakers characterized marine mammal protections as obstacles to salmon recovery. At the state level, Washington’s House Joint Memorial 4004 similarly sought to weaken the MMPA by expanding lethal removal of seals and sea lions in Puget Sound and other waters. Together, these efforts reflect a troubling trend: blaming native marine mammals while sidestepping the human-caused drivers of salmon decline.
That history is why SPAWN strongly rejects proposals to kill pinnipeds as a means of saving salmon. Natural predation is not—and has never been—the limiting factor for salmon recovery. Seals and sea lions have coexisted with salmon for thousands of years. What changed was not predation, but human intervention, beginning with dams and the widespread loss and fragmentation of habitat. Scapegoating native marine mammals for a crisis largely created by people is neither science-based nor ethical.
Dams block migration routes, warm rivers, alter natural flows, and sever salmon from the cold, complex habitats they need to survive. When compounded by degraded watersheds, polluted runoff, over-allocated water, and climate change, the picture becomes unmistakable: salmon are struggling because we have fundamentally altered their rivers. Pointing to pinnipeds as the problem ignores this reality and distracts from the real work recovery demands.
We are told that committee members pushing lethal control now “care about salmon.” But as Representative Jared Huffman has rightly asked, “who do they think they’re kidding? You can’t champion salmon recovery while slashing the very programs designed to rebuild habitat, recover river function, and uphold Tribal rights.”
For more than fifty years, the Marine Mammal Protection Act has stood as one of the most successful wildlife conservation laws in U.S. history. Enacted in 1972, the MMPA reversed catastrophic declines in seals, sea lions, whales, and dolphins by recognizing marine mammals as integral to healthy ocean ecosystems and establishing a clear national policy that they should not be depleted by human activity. The recovery of pinniped populations is not a failure of the law—it is proof that strong, science-based protections work. Weakening the MMPA now would roll back decades of progress and reintroduce politically driven wildlife management without addressing the true causes of salmon decline.
SPAWN’s work shows what actually works: removing dams and barriers, restoring floodplains, protecting cold-water refuges, and investing in watershed-scale restoration. These actions address the real limiting factors facing salmon. Killing another native species may offer a convenient political narrative, but it will not bring salmon back.
If leaders are serious about salmon recovery, they must confront the human-caused problems at the root of the crisis—starting with dams and habitat loss—while honoring Tribal sovereignty and rights. Salmon will not be saved by eliminating predators. They will be saved by fixing the rivers we have broken, and that is the work SPAWN has been doing—and will continue to do—for generations.
