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May 14, 2007

Is A Fed Sea Lion A Dead Sea Lion?

America's National Parks including Yosemite NP and Yellowstone NP have used the slogan "A Fed Bear Is A Dead Bear" in order to keep visitors from feeding the bears and conditioning them to humans. Once a bear gets a taste for human foods, it will often become a problem bear, which eventually results in its demise.

Lately, more and more stores of marine mammals interacting with humans having been reaching my ears. These cases have strong similarities to past stories of bears in parks. Perhaps you've heard of the sea lions jumping into people's boats and swamping them, but feeding the sea lions at the wharf is not something visitors automatically think is a bad idea.

A close relative to the bear evolutionarily, sea lions are just as smart as bears, likely moreso. And just like bears, they can become conditioned to humans and become problem animals. Even when great care is taken to try to keep an animal wild, any contact can change the balance.

Rehabilitated animals seem to live a tenuous existence. If they were captured young, they seem more likely to take to their human caretakers, and resist reintroduction into the wild. Such is the case of Astro, the Stellar Sea Lion.

Abandoned as a pup out in Año Nuevo State Reserve last year, Astro was taken in by researchers. He was eventually released, but despite several attempts to establish him in the wild he continues to come back to people. Recently, he was taken out to the sea lion colonies on the Farallon Islands, about 30 miles out of San Francisco Bay.

This past Friday, he returned again.

The marine mammal apparently noticed children doing laps Friday morning around a course they had set up at the Marin Country Day School, next to the shores of San Francisco Bay. The 185-pound Steller sea lion waddled ashore, shocking students and teachers.

“He did a whole lap,” said Kelly Watson, director of constituent relations and web communications at the private school.

More At: MSNBC: Sea lion joins Calif. schoolkids’ walk-a-thon

Since Astro refuses to stay wild, he will likely end up in an aquarium, just as problem bears sometimes end up in zoos. As more and more people flock to beaches as recreation areas, will we see more and more of this?

Posted by sorsha at May 14, 2007 11:35 AM