Killing Sea Lions to Protect Fish (So We Can Kill Fish?)

I was reading an article today that made me want to collectively bitchslap the human race. It was about recent illegal sea lion killings thought to be tied to groups protecting salmon. The sea lions apparently "threaten" salmon populations (depleted and far more frequently threatened by overfishing and dams), and are thus trapped and relocated when they hunt in areas where humans would like to eat said salmon. Someone apparently decided that stealing food from the mouths of sea lions by dumping them elsewhere wasn't sufficiently speciesist, so he or she shot the trapped sea lions.

The article was ripe with language suggesting that the sea lions, not the humans competing with them for salmon, were the gluttons in the equation and had to be removed to protect fish. This much I could expect, especially since modern conservation often demands that we punish natural predator/prey relationships due to decimated populations of one or the other to prevent extinctions. However, I couldn't help but laugh that it was suggested that these actions, though illegal, "protect" salmon.

Salmon shouldn't need "protecting" from sea lions. Sea lions and salmon used to have a pretty good deal; some of the salmon get eaten, meaning more reproductive success for those that don't, and of course obvious benefits to the sea lions. When people decided that fish was the new healthy fad meat and started wiping out the salmon, it suddenly became our interest to "protect" the salmon from those mean ol' sea lions, having the effrontery to think that they, not us, were damaging the populations.

Salmon preservation today has NOTHING to do with protecting salmon for their inherent value as a species, for their role in the natural food web, their importance to ecosystems, or just the fact that they're pretty nifty and it would be nice if they didn't go extinct. It is strictly about making sure that we can eat them in the future, regardless of if that relationship is a healthy one for salmon and their natural predators and prey. This is not questioned at all; we only take issue with the moral implications of how to deal with cute and fuzzy things that compete with our appetites.

Arguably any protection is better than none, and I understand (though strongly disagree with) the perspective of people who suggest that the best way to preserve a species is to permit exploitation since people will want to keep populations sufficient for future exploitation. However, that isn't the focus here: the point is that we are killing one species to promote future killing of another species and call this conservation when time and time again this methodology has resulted in only further imbalance to ecosystems - not to mention the utterly unethical murder of other animals.

A better solution to species preservation would be not killing the salmon in general, which would also eliminate the need for ethical qualms with killing competitor species (an act facilitated solely by the competition of humans with sea lions). Basically, the "management" style of species conservation is inherently flawed and morally inexcusable, as we've seen exemplified with similar efforts involving land predators and hoofstock. Conversely, attempts to restore natural balances through non-fatal means (such as reintroductions or strict limits against hunting) generally have more favorable results not just for one species, but the ecosystem as a whole.

On a more personal note, I for one would love to see people respond with as much outrage about the deaths of millions of salmon at the hands of man as they did the deaths of a few sea lions.

This relationship is the one that needs protection.