Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Federal officials are proposing a radical plan to help save Columbia River salmon: killing over 11,000 double-crested cormorants that have been eating too many of the young fish.
According to a report published Sunday by Tech Times, the US Army Corps of Engineers’ plan revealed Friday would also involve spraying vegetable oil on the birds’ eggs to keep them from hatching. The plan would reduce the size of the large black seabirds over the next four years.
The cormorants have been consuming a greater-than-expected amount of salmon and steelhead trout in the Oregon area, the engineers explained. The plan, which comes in the form of a final Environmental Impact Statement, was selected over a similar plan that would result in the killing of 18,000 of the birds by 2018, the website added.
Federal studies indicate that the cormorants consume 11 million juvenile salmon and steelhead each year, according to the Associated Press. Both species are protected under the Endangered Species Act. In 1989, only 100 nesting pairs of cormorants were on the island, but that number has exploded. Currently, more than 15,000 breeding pairs of cormorants live there.
US Army Corps spokeswoman Diana Fredlund called it “a difficult situation,” telling Reuters, “We are trying to balance the salmon and steelhead vs. the birds. It’s very difficult to find the right answer and so it’s taken us a long time. We’ve had a lot of experts working on it.”
Fredlund added that the corps also considered hazing the cormorants in order to shoo them off the island, but that would only shift the problem somewhere else and make it “somebody else’s problem.” The goal is to reduce the bird population to about 6,000 breeding pairs by 2018.
However, officials at the Audubon Society of Portland told Reuters that the real threat to the salmon and trout is not the birds, but the loss of their habitat combined with dams and fish hatcheries. Killing the cormorants will not solve the problem, they argue.
“We feel the birds are being scapegoated while the primary causes of salmon decline are not being adequately addressed,” Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the local Audubon Society, explained. He added that the group plans to fight the decision, which could be finalized by mid-March, and would even pursue legal action to stop it if necessary.
However, Blaine Parker of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission told Oregon Live that he was disappointed that the corps chose to scale back their original plan, which would have called for the shooting of 16,000 birds to reduce the cormorant population. He wondered if the revised plan would adequately reduce the amount of juvenile fish consumed annually.
“There’s been a lot of work done to get fish passage projects at the dams,” he explained. “To have all that work done, and then have those fish run into yet another obstacle once they reach saltwater, is a tremendous loss.”
The plan is still several months from being enacted. Once the proposal receives final approval, it must be published in the federal registry for 30 days. Afterwards, the Fish and Wildlife Service must award permits, and workers must be hired to carry out the duties. Fredlund said that, if all goes according to plan, culling could begin as the birds return to the island this spring.
—–
Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
Comments