River of The Dammed
Lionel was a friendly, extrovert of a sealion who frequented the feeding grounds below Bonneville Dam that his ancestors returned to...As dirested by instinct, DNA and the imparatives of his world. This includes eating salmon. Upstream, the Columbia River, is shackled by dams, poluted by agribusiness, choked with barge traffic and generally used, abused and thrown in the bushes without any loving. But once it was prime habitat for salmon and sealion alike - as well as indigenous people who had evolved in symbiosis with the River and its creatures. The living waters couldn't be bought or sold. And habitat and animal could not be unravelled without unravelling the entire tapestry.
Now the Columbia River as habitat has been converted into The Columbia River as Revenue. There's the hydropower, the transport lanes, the drainage for run-off and finally the fish. Too many people have taxed the carrying capacity of the land beyond its limits. Salmon are heading over the falls toward the thunderous silence of extinction. So what is the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's solution? Kill the sealions...for eating "too many fish". It wouldn't be "too many" if salmon habitat were not trashed by human consuption to the point that it a hostile environment for fish - and now for sealions. So Lionel the sealion, basically "died for your sins". .
- KBOO