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Press release |
September 23, 1999
For immediate release
Contact: John Harrison, 800-452-5161
PORTLAND, OR � The Northwest Power Planning Council, acting in defense of the region�s multimillion-dollar salmon recovery effort, today urged the National Marine Fisheries Service to take aggressive actions in 2000 to reduce predation by Caspian terns on juvenile salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River. The Council expects a management plan to be completed by early November, and will recommend that more than $600,000 in funding for the project be withheld if the plan is not completed.
�Northwest citizens demand results for their significant investment in fish and wildlife recovery. The Council�s role is to give those citizens a stronger voice in determining the future of fish and wildlife, and the severe impact by Caspian terns on the fish we are paying to produce and protect is simply not acceptable to us,� Council Chair Todd Maddock of Lewiston, Idaho said.
The world�s largest colony of Caspian terns, a seabird that feeds on small fish, has nested in the Columbia River estuary in recent years, particularly on Rice Island about five miles upstream from Astoria, Oregon. Rice Island is maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a disposal site for sand dredged from the river�s navigation channel and provides ideal habitat for Caspian terns, which prefer to nest on open sand.
In its letter to Will Stelle, regional director of the Fisheries Service in Seattle, the Council urged the agency to consider all necessary actions to reduce the size of the tern population in the estuary. The Fisheries Service has authority for salmon and steelhead under the Endangered Species Act.
The Council asked the Fisheries Service to intensify the two-year-old effort to relocate the birds to another area of the estuary � away from known concentrations of juvenile salmon and steelhead. About 12,500 terns nested in the estuary this year, primarily on Rice Island. While researchers have not estimated how many smolts the birds consumed, terns are estimated to have eaten as many as 18 percent of the 95 million smolts believed to be in the estuary in recent years.
An interagency management team with representatives of the Fisheries Service, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and researchers from Oregon State University is developing a management plan for the terns for 2000 and future years. The Council decided to send the letter after meeting in Spokane with representatives of the management team. At that meeting, it was apparent that there is little agreement among the federal agencies on a preferred management alternative for the future.
�We recommended that the management goal for 2000 should be to reduce predation by terns to less than 5 percent of the migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead,� Council Vice Chair Larry Cassidy of Vancouver, Washington, said. While that is a significant reduction from current estimates of the impact, it is higher than the level recommended by Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne � zero � in a recent letter to the Council.
In its letter, the Council said it expects a management plan to be in place by early November. At that time, the Council will recommend whether to approve the team�s request for $642,000 in funding through the Council�s Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program to continue the work in the coming year. The Council made clear that funding approval will be contingent on an acceptable management plan.
The Council is an agency of the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, and is charged by the Northwest Power Act of 1980 with developing a program to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife of the Columbia River Basin that have been impacted by hydroelectric dams while also assuring the Northwest an adequate, efficient, economical and reliable power supply.
