Fixing the cormorant disaster on the Columbia: ?How could this have come
out any worse??

White streaks of bird waste paint the steel trusses beneath the Astoria-
Megler Bridge over the Columbia River. Every flat surface and hidey-hole
of this bridge is stuffed and stippled with nests. Black birds roost on
the girders, evenly spaced as beads on a string, then take wing: double-
crested cormorants.

Pariahs wherever they live and roost, the birds have run into their most
recent trouble here, on this bridge connecting Washington and Oregon.

It wasn?t always this way, not until the humans got involved. Every time
people have messed with this cormorant colony, the situation has
worsened ? and the birds are in the crosshairs yet again.

They were chased out of their roost at East Sand Island eight miles
downriver by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At its 2013 peak, this
was the largest double-crested cormorant colony in North America, with
some 30,000 birds, more than 40% of the species? population in the
western U.S., according to the Corps.

They were booted from their island because of the threat they posed to
threatened and endangered salmon.

By 2011, some 20 million baby salmon and steelhead were being eaten by
the birds as they swam past the island on their way to the sea,
according to the Army Corps, including species listed for protection
under the Endangered Species Act. Wild Columbia and especially Snake
River salmon already are facing an increased threat of extinction
because of dams, hatcheries and habitat losses, all worsened by the
warming climate. With the backing of multiple tribes and agencies,
including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is
charged with protecting listed salmon, and with a permit from the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, which otherwise protects the birds ? the
Corps in 2015 unleashed a concerted kill program on the cormorants to
control predation on baby salmon sluicing downriver to the sea.

This was war: Government agents gunned down cormorants from the sky,
shot them on their nests at night from towers using night-vision
goggles, and oiled their eggs to suffocate the embryos within. In all,
the Corps killed 5,575 cormorants and destroyed 6,181 nests. Then they
bulldozed a hunk of the island back into the river.

The plan was to leave a core population of about 5,600 breeding pairs on
what was left of the island. But in 2016 the colony collapsed, as every
remaining bird on the island ? some 17,000 birds ? fled in a single day.
About a third of the breeding pairs went just where critics warned they
might: to the Astoria-Megler Bridge, where, because they are feeding
farther from the estuary, they are likely eating more salmon as a
percentage of their diet than before all this started. That is because
the birds had a wider variety of fish to choose from at the island,
which is in the estuary, than they have at the bridge.

While the program was obviously bad for the birds and for the bridge,
it?s never been proven it did any good for the salmon either."
[snip]

https://www.columbian.com/news/2024/jan/29/fixing-the-cormorant-
disaster-on-the-columbia-how-could-this-have-come-out-any-worse/

TB

Technobarbarian wrote:
>
> Fixing the cormorant disaster on the Columbia: ?How could this have come
> out any worse??
>
> White streaks of bird waste paint the steel trusses beneath the Astoria-
> Megler Bridge over the Columbia River. Every flat surface and hidey-hole
> of this bridge is stuffed and stippled with nests. Black birds roost on
> the girders, evenly spaced as beads on a string, then take wing: double-
> crested cormorants.
>
> Pariahs wherever they live and roost, the birds have run into their most
> recent trouble here, on this bridge connecting Washington and Oregon.
>
> It wasn?t always this way, not until the humans got involved. Every time
> people have messed with this cormorant colony, the situation has
> worsened ? and the birds are in the crosshairs yet again.
>
> They were chased out of their roost at East Sand Island eight miles
> downriver by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At its 2013 peak, this
> was the largest double-crested cormorant colony in North America, with
> some 30,000 birds, more than 40% of the species? population in the
> western U.S., according to the Corps.
>
> They were booted from their island because of the threat they posed to
> threatened and endangered salmon.
>
> By 2011, some 20 million baby salmon and steelhead were being eaten by
> the birds as they swam past the island on their way to the sea,
> according to the Army Corps, including species listed for protection
> under the Endangered Species Act. Wild Columbia and especially Snake
> River salmon already are facing an increased threat of extinction
> because of dams, hatcheries and habitat losses, all worsened by the
> warming climate. With the backing of multiple tribes and agencies,
> including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is
> charged with protecting listed salmon, and with a permit from the U.S.
> Fish and Wildlife Service, which otherwise protects the birds ? the
> Corps in 2015 unleashed a concerted kill program on the cormorants to
> control predation on baby salmon sluicing downriver to the sea.
>
> This was war: Government agents gunned down cormorants from the sky,
> shot them on their nests at night from towers using night-vision
> goggles, and oiled their eggs to suffocate the embryos within. In all,
> the Corps killed 5,575 cormorants and destroyed 6,181 nests. Then they
> bulldozed a hunk of the island back into the river.
>
> The plan was to leave a core population of about 5,600 breeding pairs on
> what was left of the island. But in 2016 the colony collapsed, as every
> remaining bird on the island ? some 17,000 birds ? fled in a single day.
> About a third of the breeding pairs went just where critics warned they
> might: to the Astoria-Megler Bridge, where, because they are feeding
> farther from the estuary, they are likely eating more salmon as a
> percentage of their diet than before all this started. That is because
> the birds had a wider variety of fish to choose from at the island,
> which is in the estuary, than they have at the bridge.
>
> While the program was obviously bad for the birds and for the bridge,
> it?s never been proven it did any good for the salmon either."
> [snip]
>
> https://www.columbian.com/news/2024/jan/29/fixing-the-cormorant-
> disaster-on-the-columbia-how-could-this-have-come-out-any-worse/
>
> TB
>
damn. Blatant and unfettered genocide. Whatever happened to diversity,
equity, and inclusion? Don't cormorant lives matter? CLM! CLM!

--
bill
Theory don't mean squat if it don't work.