The problem is not the sea lions killing salmon; it's the dams on the Columbia--like 14 of them right?--and all the salmon habitat degradation caused by logging, mining, road, pipeline and housing construction in the Columbia watershed.

These and other factors interfere in the salmon life cycle to the point that populations are always marginal or close to it. It's been so long since a real salmon run that people have forgotten what a genuinely healthy population looks like.