News Release
| Release Number: | 00-050 |
| Dated: | 4/11/2000 |
| Contact: | Matt Rabe, 503-808-4510 |
Portland, Ore. – A U.S. District Court judge in Seattle has ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop all work to harass Caspian terns on Rice Island.
The Corps’ contractor was to begin active harassment activities today in an effort to relocate the birds to East Sand Island, a location closer to the mouth of the Columbia River where the terns eat fewer juvenile salmon. The Corps’ effort was a collaborative plan created by the multi-agency Caspian Tern Working Group, made up of federal, state and tribal resource agencies.
The Corps, working with the U.S. Department of Justice, will have a telephonic hearing with the judge Thursday in an attempt to have the temporary restraining order set aside.
At risk are millions of juvenile salmon and steelhead migrating down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. Data collected by researchers in 1998 and 1999 shows the terns consumed about 10.9 million, or about 11 percent, of all the juvenile salmon and steelhead – wild and hatchery – that reached the lower estuary.
If the terns are not moved now, the Corps believes it will be more difficult to move the birds later in the season, after they have established nesting sites and begun laying eggs.
The push to move the terns off of Rice Island was directed by the National Marine Fisheries Service in their 1999 biological opinion as a condition of the Corps’ continuing effort to maintaining the Columbia River Federal Navigation Channel.
The lawsuit was filed Monday by the National Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife, the Seattle Audubon Society and the American Bird Conservancy.