Rise in sea lion shootings reported in California
SAN FRANCISCO — The weak and woozy California sea lion found on a San Francisco Bay-area beach in December with buckshot embedded in its skull has become an all-too-common sight for wildlife officials.
Wildlife officials have seen a slight rise in the shooting of ocean mammals in recent years, and investigators often struggle to find a culprit. There are few witnesses to such shootings, making it nearly impossible to bring a case.
"We always try to do an investigation, but unless there's an eyewitness to the shooting it's hard to make a case for our enforcement folks," said Joe Cordaro, a wildlife biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who tracks reports of the shootings.
NOAA said there were 43 reported marine mammal shootings in 2009 in the waters off the California coast -- nine more than in 2008 and 14 more than five years earlier. Of the reported shootings in 2009, all were sea lions. And officials say many more cases probably go unreported.
Wildlife officials say sea lion and human populations continue to increase, making interaction more common, especially among fishermen who compete for the same food and often view the creatures as a nuisance.
Though NOAA and the California Department of Fish and Game are responsible for investigating these cases, few cases result in prosecution. Recent public outcry over highly publicized cases like that of the wounded sea lion near San Francisco have brought more attention to these shootings.
Veterinarians at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif., are treating the wounded critter in the hope an aquarium or zoo will take it. The 7-foot-long male, dubbed Silent Knight by its rescuers, is now blind and cannot return to the wild.
When there is a witness, there usually is a case. A witness came forward after the 2009 shooting of a 650-pound sea lion nicknamed Sgt. Nevis was covered by local press and television.
Larry Legans of Sacramento was ordered to pay more than $51,000 in restitution for the cost of treating the critter, which recently underwent plastic surgery at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom to close bullet holes in its muzzle. Legas also spent a month in jail and got five years probation.
Lt. Rob Roberts, a warden with state Fish and Game Department, said the agency takes marine mammal shootings very seriously, and noted that reports have increased in kind with the growth of the sea lion population along the Northern California coast.
Roberts hopes successful prosecutions and intense media coverage of cases like Legans' will help.
"If the general public sees that there's recourse and accountability, that's a deterrent," Roberts said.
The Marine Mammal Center, where Silent Knight is being treated along with hundreds of ocean animals suffering a variety of ailments, has treated nine gunshot victims in 2010. The center treated 18 in 2009, down from a high of 72 sea lions in 1992, when the center started keeping statistics.
While the number of mammals treated for gunfire wounds has trended downward at the center over the decades, in recent years it has begun to creep back the other way, statistics show.
On Monday, more than 400 people came to see Silent Knight during the center's visiting hours, fascinated by the plight of the wounded pinniped, said Jeff Boehm, the center's executive director.
The center tries to help wardens in the investigations by determining the kind of weapon that was used and how long an animal has been wounded. For now, the center will work to try to get Silent Knight healthy and ready to live in captivity.
"We've seen over 1,000 patients in 2010, and of that number only nine were shooting victims, a small fraction," said Boehm, whose center studies and treats animals that have been injured by fishing nets, disease or environmental hazards like pollution.
"But it's dramatic, because [shootings] are entirely unnecessary situations."
RELATED SEA LION NEWS:
-- Jason Dearen, Associated Press
Top photo: Multiple buckshot fragments are seen in an X-ray of Silent Knight the sea lion at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif., on Dec. 10, 2010. Credit: Dina Warren / Associated Press
Bottom photo: A wounded sea lion named Sgt. Nevis is prepared for reconstructive surgery at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif., on Oct. 8, 2010. Credit: Chris Riley / Associated Press
This is so sad. We will all reap what these damaging humans sow.
There Will Come Soft Rains
by Sara Teasdale [from her collection Flame and Shadow, 1920]
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Posted by: LAHuman | January 03, 2011 at 08:26 PM
The punishment does not fit the crime. The sealion population is OUT of control.
http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/41666/0
The California Sea Lion is abundant and increasing in some parts of its distribution. The total global population (US and Mexico) is probably around 355,000 individuals. Some colonies in the Gulf of California have decreased in the last two decades.
Exploitation during the 19th and 20th centuries caused population reductions. The distribution range has changed little since exploitation era but population numbers have increased mainly in California, where the estimate is around 238,000 individuals (Carretta et al. 2007). The population in Mexico occupies both side of the Baja California Peninsula: the west coast has an estimated population of 75,000 – 87,000 (Lowry and Maravilla 2005), whereas the Gulf of California populations is near 30,000 (Szteren et al. 2006). Total population of California sea lions is therefore around 355,000 individuals.
The California Sea Lion population is apparently reaching carrying capacity in the USA (Carretta et al. 2007) whereas in the Gulf of California the population has decreased by ~20% in the last 15 years (Szteren et al. 2006). The California Sea Lion has 13 rookeries from the Channel Islands to the south of Baja California and 13 rookeries inside the Gulf of California. The population in California and Baja California show declines during severe El Niño events that usually return to previous levels within 4-5 years. The Gulf of California does not show this sort of marked fluctuations but it is genetically isolated from the remaining geographic distribution (Maldonado et al. 1985; Schramm 2003, Bowen et al. 2005).
Population Trend: Increasing
Posted by: Blackfish | January 04, 2011 at 02:40 PM