CASCADE LOCKS, Ore. - Above the spillways of Bonneville Dam, Darrell Schmidt patroled with his shotgun, drawing a bead on furry brown California sea lion heads popping up from the Columbia River and blasting off a beanbag round.
All spring he was part of a nonlethal, and not very effective, effort to keep the federally protected animals from gobbling threatened spring chinook salmon as they schooled up at the dam's fish ladders en route to upriver spawning grounds.
"I got one on the back of the neck with a beanbag and he didn't even drop the fish he was eating," said Schmidt of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Blasts of rubber buckshot, earsplitting …
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