Oversight Hearing titled "Sea Lion Predation in the Pacific Northwest"
House Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries
2025-12-03
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Source: Congress.gov
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The Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries will come to order. I would like to apologize for the temperature in here. Hopefully it will warm up as we proceed with our hearing today. If not, maybe we'll have to go out in the hallway and start dragging people in here to get the body heat. But hopefully we won't have to resort to that. Good morning, everyone. I want to welcome members, witnesses, and our guests in the audience of today's hearing. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the subcommittee at any time. Under Rule 4F, any oral opening statements at hearings are limited to the chair and the ranking member. I therefore ask unanimous consent that all other members' opening statements be made part of the hearing record if they are submitted in accordance with Committee Rule 3O. Without objection, so ordered. I also ask unanimous consent that the Congressman from Washington, Mr. Bumgarner, be allowed to participate in today's hearing. Without objection, so ordered. We are here today to hold an oversight hearing titled Sea Lion Predation in the Pacific Northwest. I now recognize myself for a five minute opening statement. This morning, the subcommittee committee will examine an issue that has only become more challenging in recent years, pinniped predation on threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead and the conflicting requirements of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. pinniped refers to a category of marine mammal, including California sea lions, stellar sea lions, and harbor seals, among others. In the decades since the enactment of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, pinniped populations have exploded, and they are dominating ecosystems across the Pacific Northwest and devastating salmon and steelhead populations listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The National Marine Fisheries Service has found on repeated occasions over the last two decades that pinniped predation is a leading factor in preventing the recovery of these salmon species. One study found that by 2015, across the Pacific Coast, pinnipeds consumed six times the amount of Chinook salmon that were captured through commercial and recreational fishing combined. The imbalance between unchecked pinniped populations and their threatened endangered prey causes significant challenges throughout the Pacific Northwest. In today's hearing, we will hear the perspective of tribes that bear the impacts and have led on pinniped management. To address this issue in the Columbia River, Congress enacted bipartisan legislation in 2018 authorizing the Secretary of Commerce to permit the Columbia River tribes and states of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon to conduct lethal take of pennypads based on their location in the Columbia River. Today's hearing provides us with an opportunity to examine the law's effectiveness and explore additional solutions to restore the balance between salmon and pennypads. The subcommittee is joined today by Asia Dakota, the executive director of the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, who will talk about the Columbia River tribes' experience and implementation of the 2018 statute, the effectiveness of LegalTake as a management tool to improve salmon abundance, and the considerable resources that our tribes and tribal organizations have devoted to recovering salmon populations. Tribes outside of the Columbia River Basin have also dealt with this issue, from the Oregon coast to the Puget Sound in Washington. I'd like to thank Chairman Ed Johnstone of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and Chairman Ken Choke of the Nisqually Indian Tribe for joining us today to share their perspectives.
Thank you both for being here. It is my hope that today's hearing gives us an opportunity to reflect on lessons learned from previous efforts so that we can craft solutions that effectively bring pennypads under control and facilitate the growth of healthy, sustainable salmon and steelhead populations. With that, I want to thank the witnesses for traveling to Washington to be here and their members for their interest in this very important issue. I now recognize Ranking Member Hoyle
for her opening statements. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. And thank you so much for being here today. This is a very, very important issue, especially representing the Pacific Northwest. We're going to discuss the impacts of sea lion predation on salmon in the Pacific Northwest. And I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this important issue for my state and this region. In 2018, Congress created a new tool to address the growing problem of sea lions at the Willamette Falls and Bonneville Dam. Sea lions were traveling 100 miles upstream and eating a salmon buffet in areas where they had learned that salmon would be concentrated. And why wouldn't they?
At the time the MMPA didn't have the necessary flexibility to allow state and tribal fish and wildlife managers to address this population-wide sea lion problem. Section 120F of the Marine Mammal Protection Act allows the states of Washington and Oregon as well as the tribes on the Columbia River to get a permit and to manage problematic sea lions at key places along the Columbia River and its tributaries.
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