Does rehabilitation contribute to the pinniped problem on the West Coast?
Just as the numbers of rehabilitated pinnipeds do not significantly contribute to species conservation, the numbers of rehabilitated pinnipeds should not significantly affect any problems being caused by the numbers of pinnipeds. NMFS would be the first to acknowledge that there is a potential for some rehabilitated animals to become nuisance animals if they become habituated to humans, but with a couple of individual animal exceptions, there are no data which indicate that this is happening. Both, marine mammal rehabilitators and NMFS recognize the need to determine if rehabilitation efforts are exacerbating human/pinniped conflicts. NMFS is encouraging facilities to increase the post-release monitoring of animals to determine both survival and whether the animal integrates into the normal population.
