Serial Animal Abuse By The State Of Oregon And How Nothing Can Be Done To Stop It.

The Poor native Columbia River Sea Lions are under attack with a campaign of terror in an ongoing pseudo science inquisition by the State of Oregon. The sea lions including their babies, even as a protected species have been scapegoated as the cause of some possibly declining salmon runs because salmon are a normal part of their diet. The real cause of salmon declines , with good evidence to support it was that hatchery salmon were originally selected from the best stock of the Columbia river for qualities like size , stamina , the ability to jump of sometimes nearly impossible cascades and a general vitality in being able to survive. The so called wild life biologist have decided arbitrarily that human intervention in natural selection process disqualifies the better fish as wild fish. Instead they favor weaker non selected non hatchery fish that don't have the higher quality genetics originally selected for hatchery breeding. They blame the dams and they blame the temperature of water behind dams and they blame this that and the other thing and now they release all their furry against the poor native River system sea lions on the Columbia River because they see the fish being eaten by these beautiful animals. It , as some organizations in favor of the sea lions say has become a crime for the sea lions to eat. The Oregon News Media is quick to add the world California to one species of the offending fish eating sea lion as "California Sea Lions" just to make them sound un-natural and non native which is anything but the truth. The passions to kill all the sea lions is something the local media has worked on with a passion of their own.

The Sea Lions are now being subjected to constant harassment with rubber bullets and shot at them and being caged where some panic and die and the ones that survive being caught in the cages are painfully branded. It is not just the adult sea lions being branded with red hot branding irons but their babies too. Up river closer to the dams state officials in fast boats shot at them or make very loud banging noises to harass the animals in their native state of being. It is just the animal in the river that is the top of the food chain other than humans and is being made out as a threat to commercial and sport fishermen as the grand excuse to allow the serial animal abusers legal access to them. What is really amazing is that the same people who have credentials as "wildlife biologists" as a scientific field are the same ones that decided that hatchery fish originally bred from river stock are unfairly competitive with the fish in the river system that have not been selected for breeding by humans . They are known to kill the successful fish in the river to promote the less successful ones they think are more natural . It is absurd because the river would have fostered the same genetic viability of the ones their wildlife biologist salmon breeding predecessors selected. The Statistical probability that the best would survive without human selection is no greater than humans selecting the outliers on the higher end of the population bell curve. That is why it is called natural selection in evolutionary theory. Human selection over 70-100 years of fish breeding is unlikely to remove genetic variability . What the new wildlife people at the fisheries have done is to promote and select genetic traits of failure instead of success which if anything has been the main cause of a perceived decline of salmon. The salmon numbers don't make much sense anyway because the original salmon counts In the river came from a period of time where salmon were caught by large wheels that scooped them out of the river when they were running and the grand total counts were estimate by the number of cans of processed salmon that were packaged. Of course the sea lions were back there then too and they were back at the natural dams and cascades in the river back when the Indians alone were their competitors for fish. The Indians had a habit of making articles of clothing out of the skins of sea lions as it happens which means they had no intention of destroying that population of animals.

As the animal abuse inquisition gets worse and worse and the serial animal abusers get the job of taking care of the creatures as a political public service to the community and the environment so called people who enjoy harming animals are first in line to take the jobs. To see the photos of the horrible branding go this site: http://www.seashepherd.org/dam-guardians/ , Other acts of abuse are not so easily photographed. What happens at the base of the dam in the river is off limits to most photographers including the cages and when people are standing at the river's edge as a Sea Lion execution firing squad either to kill , meme or to harass the animals it is dangerous to get photographs.

What the Columbia River fishery really needs is some more reasonable more scientific wildlife biologists who understand that the sea lions are completely natural and a part of the eco system and that the main reason the fish seem to have trouble with producing greater numbers is that Wild salmon are being artificially excluded from the population of all river fish just because other happen to be human assistance raised in fish hatchery ponds. When you look at the other salmon fisheries around the world where the distinction is not being made between what some deem to be wild verses hatchery then you almost instantly see much greater numbers. The fear that this is river farming and not wild is pretty absurd. The Sea Lions are now the ones scapegoated, Before it was the dams and that was unfounded because after the el nino in the pacific ocean when away and the droughts over the north west ended in 100 year flooding the salmon population came back with a vengeance. Too many variables exist in the river , out to sea and other for the Sea Lions to get all the blame. Again to see the horrors of the deep branding of the skins of these poor animals go see these photos at this site: http://www.seashepherd.org/dam-guardians/ . Maybe you will take the time to contact the local politicians and complain.