For years, the Bonneville Dam on the Oregon-Washington border has made life all too easy for the sea lions that congregate in the Columbia River just outside of Portland. Fish ladders in the dam create a bottleneck for salmon swimming upriver to spawning grounds, which allows sea lions to easily swoop in and dine on endangered salmon.

But now it’s the sea lions that have become the easy prey.

In an attempt to keep the sea lions from gorging on the salmon, state and federal authorities set up traps to humanely catch and remove them from the dam, to be shipped to zoos and wildlife parks. But over the weekend someone shot and killed six of the sea lions as they lay in the traps. According to the Associated Press, the animals were apparently shot in the middle of the night; their bodies were found around noon on Sunday.

Pinpointing the perpetrator will not be an easy task, because the Columbia River sea lions have been at the center of a long battle, and have a number of enemies. American Indian tribes in the area and others who fish the river for salmon have been pushing for months to get the federal government to set up regulations protecting the salmon and allowing lethal force to be used against the sea lions (themselves a protected species).

Just a hypothetical: instead of culling the endangered sea lions, maybe we should consider culling those pesky Homo sapiens.

[	Tags	|	ben stein, expelled, hilarity, internet, michael egnor	]
[	Emotional Status	|	tired	]

The Claim

Michael Egnor says in Expelled that he expected criticism, but was shocked by the “viciousness” and “baseness” of the response.

The Facts

Michael Egnor had apparently never been on the Internet before.