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Who Killed the Sea Lions?
"We really haven't ruled anything out but space aliens," he said.
What about motive? So far the most passionate participants in the debate have been members of the fishing community and animal rights activists, said Charles Hudson, a spokesman for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. "There's some out-of-the-gate speculation that it could be from the fishing community, or the animal rights community, doing some sort of back-burn on the issue, blowing it up by sacrificing a few sea lions as a means to an end," Hudson said.
But he quickly added that he is skeptical about such speculation, noting that events have been moving in the fishermen's favor lately. "It would be a reach to think a fisherman who understood the issue would do this, knowing it could all be undone with one stupid move. If it was a fisherman, it was one of the dumber of the fishermen out there," Hudson said.
Earlier this week Humane Society officials pondered the possible suspects. Sharon Young, marine issues field director for the group, said, "There's a fairly narrow universe of people who could be responsible … I think there are a lot of fishermen who are very frustrated that they're competing with sea lions for fish."
Dennis Richey, executive director of Oregon Anglers, a 3,000-member group that represents fishermen along the coast, pointed out that there are plenty of places to kill sea lions on the Columbia—places that wouldn't require breaching federal security for access. "The average Joe out there fishing is pissed off at the sea lions, but they wouldn't go up to the dam and shoot them in the trap," Richey said, before the news surfaced that investigators had ruled out gunshots. "I suspect this was done for effect … This was too organized to be some hothead."
Another puzzle: if the animals were already in the process of being trapped and removed, why go to the trouble of killing them? Who would risk a jail sentence of up to a year and a fine of $100,000 to do something that was already in the works?
Whatever the answer, the mystery has muddied the waters for administrators trying to figure out the best way to address the broader problems at hand. As Gorman put it Tuesday, "I don't know what we're going to do next year … given what's happened in the last [few days]."
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: Brian Gorman @ 05/19/2008 12:24:08 AM
Comment: Heat stroke? Nonsense. It wasn't even 60 degrees. They were not in there that long, and it wasn't hot enough to kill them. This SO stinks of cover-up. Someone was in big trouble, because a gunman sneaking into a dam that supposedly had security all beefed up after 9/11, that was supposedly protected by "Homeland Security" (guffaw), would lead to all SORTS of questions that would be hard to answer.
Posted By: *Think* @ 05/14/2008 5:40:21 PM
Comment: It could have been fishermen. Definitly not animal rights activists. I think we should be looking more at the people who work at the dams. INSIDE JOB!!!
Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 05/14/2008 3:37:55 PM
Comment: Jeez. First it was the Bitter And The Clinging in Pennsylvania. Then it was The Uneducated White Redneck in West Virginia. Now it is Psychotic Fishermen In Oregon.
Thus does the leftwing in their ignorance toss out such emotionalist rubrics to be digested by the similarly ignorant. It had not occurred to these that another source has created this problem,one vastly unrelated to the fishing fleets now laying idle all along the Pacfic coasts.
Water. The birthplace and movement of the great salmon schools of the Silver,Coho and Chinook begins in the Sacramento Delta region in California,which is being sucked dry by increasing demand from Los Angeles and the states interior. These fish ''disappeared''long before they ever made it into a Oregon fishermans net. Over 800,000 salmon in the 2007 season virtually vanished before they ever made it to the Pacific. Why?[Since NEWSWEEK isn't offering any illumination as it is their job to remain a biased source of propaganda,rather than edifying information].
SCIENCE,and NATURE Magazines,as well as the Associated Press,the San Francisco Chronicle,The Sacramento Bee,The Oregonian,and the US Fish and Game Dept. identify three major culprits. One,the loss of water itself for irrigation and human consumption. Next,the use of diversion and irrigation culvert systems that trap smaller fry and juvenile fish,and the rampant growth of parasitical algaes that are choking off the Delta region,coupled with massive drainoffs of pesticides and chemicals from Delta real estate development,created by home buyers driven out of the more expensive Bay Area housing markets. The enemy is not the ''fisherman''. It is us.