By JEFF BARNARD
Associated Press
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–> Wildlife Services is slated to file a plan with the corps next week before starting to kill the birds.
Government hunters have begun scouting an island at the mouth of the Columbia River as they prepare to shoot thousands of hungry seabirds to stop them from eating baby salmon.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman Diana Fredlund said hunters from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services agency went to a small uninhabited island off Ilwaco, Wash., Thursday to survey the land before carrying out plans to reduce the population of double crested cormorants from about 14,000 breeding pairs to 5,600 pairs by 2018.
Double crested cormorants are large black birds with long necks, hooked bills and webbed feet that dive beneath the surface to eat small fish.
Wildlife Services is slated to file a plan with the corps next week before starting to kill the birds.
An environmental impact statement calls for them to shoot adult birds, spray eggs with oil so they won’t hatch, and destroy nests. Carcasses of dead birds will be donated to educational and scientific institutions, or otherwise disposed of through burial or incineration.
Biologists blame the cormorants for eating an average 12 million baby salmon a year as they migrate down the Columbia to the ocean. Some of the fish are federally protected species.
The cormorant population on East Sand Island near Ilwaco, Wash., has grown from about 100 pairs in 1989 to some 14,000 pairs now, making it the largest cormorant nesting colony in the West. Soil dredged from the bottom of the Columbia to deepen shipping channels was dumped on the island over the years, expanding the area available for nesting.
Conservation groups failed in a bid to get a federal judge to stop the killing, arguing dams on the Columbia kill far more young salmon than the birds do.
Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the Portland Audubon Society, said Wildlife Services and the corps should hold off for this year after getting started two months later than recommended. The late start would increase the suffering of the birds by producing more chicks that starve to death after their parents are killed.
“I think this demonstrates a remarkable level of indifference and ineptitude,” he said.
Cormorants are the latest birds targeted for eating baby salmon. Biologists pushed Caspian terns off Rice Island in the Columbia, and created nesting habitat in lakes in eastern Oregon and San Francisco Bay to draw them away from the mouth of the Columbia.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife also has been shooting and harassing cormorants on coastal rivers to protect salmon.
Sea lions are also killed to reduce the numbers of adult salmon eaten as they wait to go over the fish ladder at Bonneville Dam in the Columbia.
Exposing the Big Game 
Reblogged this on Coalition for American Wildbirds.
“Indifference and ineptitude”? Yes, sounds like the WS. They must have the shortest agency manual in the government–just one chapter and it’s on killing.
Stop managing wildlife you idiots! Fire the Wildlife Agencies: (USFWS, Interior, state agencies, USDA Wildlife Services, BLM), and Canada which has killed thousands of wolves in name of ungulate farming:
The US government, Canada and other nations (The march of civilization and rancher-hunter war on wildlife) have long been in the wildlife killing business. They have offered bounties on predators, poisoned and gassed prairie dogs, allowed the near extinction of bison, prairie dogs, black footed ferret, the wolf (wolf bounties), wolverine, and marginalized the grizzly, lion, and many others. The war on coyotes has been unrelenting. Wildlife services kill wildlife by the millions to appease the fishermen, hunters, ranchers and farmers and others. Hunters and ranchers, fishermen and hunters, bedfellows of the wildlife agencies nearly wiped out most wildlife. With the advent of wildlife agency hunting regulations, the hunter has been somewhat contained; and now even count themselves as “conservationists” because they have essentially farmed game sport (recreational killing opportunities) animals and marginalized predators on the erroneous rationale of less predators to share game with the more game (recreational killing opportunities). Instead of an emphasis on wilderness and wildlife ecology, USDA Wildlife Services kills nearly over 3 million animals a year and state agencies millions more in recreational killing opportunities and “management”. State wildlife agencies use hunters to “manage” (“sportsmen”) game and predators. It is very doubtful that state or federal wildlife agencies or their biologists know enough about wildlife ecology to “manage” wildlife balances. Ranchers may tolerate big bird and other sport game birds, elk, and deer and antelope; but are very hostile to predators. Wildlife agencies, state and federal, are not friendly to predators and defer to hunters, ranchers, conservative state legislatures, and their ilk and their interests in development and extraction and leases. Ranchers and farmers destroy wildlife habitat with the plow and grazing not only on private land but ever more and more on public land facilitated by the US government in leased grazing, leased farming, and leases to extraction industries avenues. Encroachers on public land often, in turn, adding insult added to injury, asks the federal government, such as Wildlife Services, to kill animals that are “encroaching” on their leased public land. Conservation efforts and new agencies such as ESA and EPA and private conservation agencies have and are battling for balanced ecologies, the predators, and many animals of no concern to sportsmen, ranchers and farmers, and extraction industries and development interests. Agencies, like the USFWS often cave into ranchers hunters, state wildlife agencies, conservative state legislatures, a government tradition of really prioritizing those interests. The arguments that threatens remaining wilderness and wildlife is as old as civilization, making a buck by the traditional enemies of wildlife. What is not appreciated enough is what little is left: In the US roughly 2.6 % in the lower 48 and another 2.5 % in Alaska; and this is under continuing and unremitting pressure from, guess where, the traditional enemies of wilderness and wildlife, still too often facilitated by the wildlife agencies. Private conservation agencies often find themselves in conflict with wildlife agencies who should be on their side and the side of preserving wilderness, balanced wildlife ecology, and the predators who are essential to the balanced wildlife ecology. The wildlife agencies, state and federal, need firing and revamping to emphasize wildlife preservation, wildlife viewing, and a heritage of wilderness and wildlife in what is left of the available habitat. There is something terribly wrong when we see wildlife agencies aligning with ranchers, farmers, “sportsmen”, conservative state legislatures. It is time for major upheavals of them, their agendas, their protocols, their heads and replacing them with priorities on preserving, recovering, protecting what is left of wilderness and wildlife, not siding with the traditional enemies of wildlife and wilderness (ranching, hunters, conservative state legislatures and predator hating and fearing parochials, extraction industries, and development and such parochial ilk that echoes their sentiments).
USFWS, the very agency that should be out front protecting wolves is not. USFWS turned wolves over to state management (2012) in the midwest (recently re-listed by courts in WY and midwest), but still politically delisted in ID and MT. Since state management, hundreds have been killed by state agencies’ management by hunting and trapping. Federal judges have returned wolves in WY and the midwest (MI, MN, WI) to the protected list where they belong indefinitely. Wolves do not need to be “managed” by general hunting and trapping seasons; that is a anti-wolf myth and a state wildlife agency myth that goes along with a state level management of wildlife by hunting and trapping. State management means turning wolves over to about 6 percent of the population that hunts and and and traps and their buddies in the state wildlife agencies that sell them licenses, an unholy alliance of hunters, trappers and agencies. Wolves do not need to be managed in the way state wildlife agencies do; they will manage their own populations. Maybe particular wolves or wolf packs need to be “managed” but managing them by general hunting and trapping seasons is likely counter productive. Ranchers would be better off with nonlethal management and managing their livestock better vis a vis predators.