Courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

This summer, federal fisheries officials took away the hunting license they had awarded to state officials in Oregon, Washington and Idaho who wanted to kill the sea lions that are eating endangered salmon.

It was a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that nixed what the federal fisheries personnel, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, delicately call the “removal” of the sea lions.

The court decision raised a basic question: Why is it not O.K. for sea lions, who tend to cluster at the base of the Bonneville dam waiting for dinner to be delivered, to snack on as much as 4.2 percent of the salmon in the river when it is O.K. for human fishermen to catch four times as many?

Now the three states are back looking for a new authorization to hunt sea lions, and they have some answers to that question. First: sea lions are indiscriminate about which salmon they catch, making no distinction between fish from hatcheries and endangered wild salmon. Second: sea lions eat their fill regardless of whether a salmon run is large or small; when a run is small, fishermen hold back.

In other words, they can control the fishing industry but not the sea lions.

But a later section of the states’ petition suggests that their motivation is more than simple species protection.

“California sea lions often exhibit bold and aggressive behaviors that include stealing hooked fish while they are being landed, even to the point of taking the fish from a landing net or the hands of an angler bringing the fish into the boat.”

It continued: “There have been reports of anglers being bitten by a sea lion in this situation as well as anglers being pulled overboard while holding onto a landing net that was grabbed by a sea lion. Many sport angling vessels are small and could be capsized by these types of actions. …”

Currently, 5 of the 13 salmon and salmon-related species that are protected under the Endangered Species Act are being consumed by sea lions, increasing crowds of which have gathered around Bonneville Dam, which is a natural barrier to salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

From 2002 to 2010, sea-lion consumption of salmon increased fivefold. the consumption per sea lion rose from nearly 34 fish in 2002 to more than 74 fish in 2009 before dropping back to 57 fish per capita last year.

In the larger scheme of things, of course, neither the sea lions nor their human fishing counterparts are the crucial impediments to having healthy salmon stocks. Environmentalists would argue that the dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers are the culprits in interrupting the normal life cycle of the fish, and there’s plenty of evidence to support that view. But it is also clear that the Columbia River’s hydroelectric dams provide plentiful and cheap (and carbon-free) electricity to the Northwest in a cost-effective manner.

So to accommodate the dams, a series of other actions have been taken to preserve salmon habitat, facilitate the trip back to its spawning grounds, and otherwise compensate for the large barriers placed along their primeval highways.

Which takes us back to the sea lions and their voracious appetites — an evolutionary answer, said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the oceanic and atmospheric administration, to the fact that the baddest, fattest sea lion is a “babe magnet,” in Mr. Gorman’s words.

So, with the Aug. 18 filing of the state’s new request, the question is posed again: should sea lions be kept from doing what comes naturally, to preserve species facing threats from many quarters?

The oceanic and atmospheric administration has several weeks to answer, and the salmon have several months before their early runs head up the Columbia and toward the sea lions’ ersatz dining hall.