Blue Heron & Beaver at Wilamette Falls

Wildlife on the WIllamette River
Oregon City, Oregon June 05, 2017


When it comes to building relationships for creating and sustaining ecological health in the Columbia river estuary there is no better prescription than the beaver. The beaver are the original engineers on the Columbia/ Willamette Rivers before the US ACOE and PGE came to town. Sadly no sea lions were observed at Willamette Falls on this day in Oregon City as these animals tend to head on their way towards their rookeries by the end of May, SLDB observers report.
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When it comes to stocking rivers for sport and commercial fishing there are billions of dollars at stake lobbied & invested to scapegoat sea lions and wild salmon and there is presssure to continue business as usual. Altogehter to let those that degrade habitat and remove habitat from production while exempting regulation of the use of deadly pesticides and other toxics around our waterways while blaming sea lions is not protecting the salmon.

Jamie Herrera- Beutler and Kurt Schrader shamefully vote yes on HR 953 last week which allows exemption of the regulation of pesticides used around our waterways which will not protect endangered species while they both advocate for the indiscriminate, not biologically sound killing of sea lions on the Willamette / Columbia River and all of its tributaries under the fictitious guise of protecting salmon.

Herrera-Beutler shamefully has stated that “Um and the sea lions are not just a threat to salmon but a threat to "recreational" access on the Columbia River which is of great importance to my district. “

Well Mrs Herrera - Beutler not everybody in Oregon has the time or the desire to go fishing for endangered species, and the waterways belong to all of us not just sport and commercial fisher people.

Moreover NOT everyone has the desire to lease out all of our public lands and waterways along the Columbia/ River estuary and continental shelf for fracking and fossil fuel development giving the green light to Exxon, Bp, Chevron and Mobil is not protecting endangered species, or sport fishering while shame fully seeking to indiscriminatly shoot marine mammals in the Columbia River estuary which has always been home to the sea lions and the salmon for over ten thousand years.

Therefore in regards to salmon so called "recovery" ---we ought not to ignore the huge elephant in the room of wild salmon recovery, which is ocean acidfication, the "blob" warming water-- temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels which fills the sky and the fish with Mercury and degradation of our air and waterways by pollution and pesticides undermines the public's investment into salmon recovery and does not protect endangered cold water species from a sure extinction. Sea Lion or no sea lions on the river.

You can't always get what you want, but if-- you do nothing, you get nothing!

You can only lead a horses to water but you can not make them drink.

The time is now not to ignore the elephant in the room of wild salmon protection and stop scapegoating sea lions and wild salmon-- before it is too late.