u/BlackFish42c

Sasha loves a evening swim on Lake Washington

Current spending data reveals the following financial breakdowns for sea lion programs:

1. Cost Per Individual Sea Lion Removal (Culling)
The most direct and widely discussed financial metric is the cost of removing predatory sea lions to protect endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest: [1]
$38,000 per sea lion: Congressional and state wildlife data from 2026 shows that the highly regulated, "onerous" process of trapping, testing, and lethally removing a single California or Steller sea lion costs up to $38,000. [1, 2]
$203 per salmon saved: This translates to roughly $203 in taxpayer funding spent for every single salmon protected from sea lion predation. [1]

2. NOAA Federal Marine Mammal Spending
Because NOAA manages sea lions federally, their broader budget lines include:[1, 2]
$175 Million to $200 Million Annually: NOAA’s overarching budget for "Protected Species Research and Management"—which funds sea lion conservation, population tracking, and whale/sea turtle protections—averages $175 million to $200 million per year. [1]
Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Grants: NOAA awards roughly $3.8 million per year to local stranding networks to rescue, rehabilitate, and investigate sick, stranded, or entangled seals and sea lions across the country. [1]

3. State Fish & Wildlife Agency Spending (Federal Partnerships)
State agencies—like the **Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW)**and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW)—receive both state funds and federal grants to manage localized sea lion overpopulation: [1, 2, 3]
$753,000 Contract: WDFW was allocated $753,000 specifically for localized sea lion control on the Lower Columbia River.
$1.5 Million to $3.5 Million Proposals: State legislators continuously push for special appropriations up to $3.5 million to buy specialized trapping equipment to keep sea lions out of critical salmon-spawning tributaries. Now based on NOAA estimates there’s between 2000 and 4000 California Sea Lions in Columbia River and native Stelar Sea lions which are native to Washington run around 2000. The average Sea Lion eats 30-50 lbs of fish per day.

Based on 4000 sea lions x 50 = 200,000 lbs of fish per day x 30 days equals 6,000,000 lbs of fish per month.

Next time you complain about where are the salmon, Steelhead, Sturgeon now you know. Our government and state are screwing our future!!!

Sasha Loves the water over anything else.

Looks much better 😝

Sasha’s first Swim of 2026. Very warm day in Seattle area.

Sasha’s morning snuggle. 💕🦮🫶🏼🦴