Southwest Washington shows a united front for sea lion control

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 20, 2026

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in both the Washington state Senate and House of Representatives have introduced bills to begin crowdfunding to support additional efforts to control an invasive sea lion population in the state.

The Senate and the House read a long list of bills into the record on the first day of session, Monday, Jan. 12, including Senate Bill 5851 and House Bill 2131. Two bipartisan groups of lawmakers, largely from Southwest Washington, are leading the charge to pass the bills that will raise additional funds for additional sea lion control outside of the work the state is already doing.

The two bills specifically call for the state to begin taking donations for sea lion management during aquatic vessel registration and renewal. If approved, county auditors and other officials who handle licensing would be required to ask clients for a voluntary donation of $1 or more toward a new state sea lion management account. The bill also creates the “Sea lion Predation Control Account” to store the funds donated by Washingtonians during vessel registration.

State Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, is the primary sponsor of HB 2131 and is joined by other members of the House of Representatives representing Southwest Washington, including Rep. Lisa Parshley, D-Olympia, and Rep. Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia.

State Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, is leading the charge in the Senate as primary sponsor of SB 5851 and is also joined by other Southwest Washington lawmakers including John Braun, R-Centralia.

The money that would be raised by the implementation of either of the proposed bills is intended to help protect native salmonid populations by managing an ever-growing population of sea lions that have penetrated deeper and deeper into the region’s rivers, especially those connected to the Columbia. In recent years, sea lions and seals have even penetrated Lewis County, making their way miles up the Cowitz River.

According to the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife, sea lions are a serious threat to salmon populations and have learned to prey on the dwindling species at their most vulnerable points near dams, salmon ladders and other natural choke points. Sea lions are especially a threat to specific runs of king salmon and steelhead trout.

“Since monitoring began in the early 2000s, sea lions at Bonneville Dam have consumed thousands of migrating fish each year, many from runs listed as threatened and endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act,” reads a passage on sea lion management from the WDFW website.

The federal government has allowed Washington and Oregon to begin taking lethal measures to remove California sea lions since 2008 and, according to WFDW, the Bonneville Power Administration has had success in removing sea lions and protecting the fish they prey on. A newer federal law passed in 2018 made even more allowances for state and federal governments to begin managing sea lions, including removing another species known as the Steller sea lion.

However, more recently, some have complained that efforts to remove sea lions have not been enough. U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, recently presented to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources highlighting the problems.

According to the congresswoman and her team’s findings, current efforts are not doing enough to address the threat sea lions pose to salmon. In her presentation, Gluesenkamp Perez said Oregon and Washington have not gotten close to removing the amount of sea lions allowed by the federal government. She added that she believes that is likely because of the high cost and arduous steps required to remove and euthanize a California or Steller sea lions.

“The cost and the onerous back and forth of trapping the creature, identifying its threat, shaking a can of pennies at it, retrapping and then finally darting, contribute heavily,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “We’ve done some back of the envelope math to try and determine the cost to remove sea lions under the permit. From our estimates, it costs over $38,000 per removal from the Columbia River. That’s roughly $203 per salmon saved in state and taxpayer federal dollars.”

Both of the bills looking to raise additional funds for sea lion control were referred to committee after being introduced, but neither bill has yet been scheduled for a hearing. HB 2131 was immediately referred to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee while SB 5851 was referred to the Senate Ways and Means Committee — the main budgetary committee in the upper house of the state Legislature.