More bad ideas on the backs of other bad ideas. Don’t bears eat salmon? Eagles? you name it. Might as well kill them all. What a bunch of idiot ideas. More feelgood options that don’t change a thing. But let’s not talk about taking down the dams that are both losing money and killing fish. Can’t go there.
There are a lot of predators known to eat imperiled salmon, from sea lions to double-crested cormorants. For a long time, biologists thought gulls weren’t a big part of the problem. Now, they say that was a miscalculation. “When some analysis was done, the impact of gulls – just in the section from McNary (Dam) to Bonneville (Dam) – nearly 20 percent of the fish taken were taken by gulls,” said Blaine Parker, an avian predation coordinator with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission…. The solution he proposes? Lethal control of specific problem gulls, along with non-lethal harassment…. Any killing of gulls — referred to as “lethal management” or “lethal control” by the government — is a tactic the Audubon Society of Portland vehemently opposes. “It’s a continuation of a very unfortunate pattern of killing wildlife to protect other wildlife,” said Bob Sallinger, conservation director at the society. It’s not the wildlife that’s the problem, Sallinger said, it’s the dams. Killing gulls, he said, is “pure scapegoating.” Courtney Flatt reports. (NW Public Broadcasting)
To Help Save Salmon, Fish Advocates Want To Kill Gulls
Filed under: Puget Sound | Tagged: Puget Sound |
Don’t worry Al or audubon society, IF you breach the Snake River dams, the 10s of thousands of gulls, cormorants, and pelicans that are now lining the banks of the Columbia and Snake Rivers will die of starvation since there will no longer be hundreds of thousand fingerling salmon for them to devour, not to mention the pike minnows(squaw fish), seals and sea lions that camp just below the dams. Having first hand witnessing the small stream of water that flows down the Snake River in the fall, bordered by wide muddy banks, there won’t be a big enough supply of fish to feed them. (Perhaps you might find some pictures of this in the Tri-City Herald.) Note: From my limited observations before the dams there were very few gulls, and cormorants and pelicans were essentially unknown in the Columbia Basin.
“Removing some of those birds wouldn’t hurt the population overall, he said.”… Interesting comment. Definitely not based in science.