"They're eating over 6 percent of all the wild steelhead that are passing through the lower Columbia River"

Photo: MDF

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposes to kill 16,000 cormorants, which it says are eating too many salmon and steelhead trout.

This growing trend of killing some species to protect another is drawing opponents.

LINK  (via: National Geographic)

Comments

[Nate Young]

I hate those bastards. Cormorants can truly have a devastating effect on a local population of fish if their densities get too high. That being said, killing 16,000 of them will most likely not work. These are extremely intelligent birds and will not stick around to be killed in mass. Secondly, if the gov't is successful, god knows how many millions of $'s it will cost. That money could be better spent improving and expanding steelhead spawning grounds through dam removal etc... Predator control for any species has proved time and time again to be much less effective than habitat. If they really feel like removing them is a viable plan, then put a $5 bounty on them like they do on Nutria in Louisiana. People will go out and kill a bunch of them and make a few hundred $. This will reduce their population to a degree, and cause the birds to disperse.

[Chris Garner]

Bring in the snipers! Had the same problem here in Minnesota on some of the Walleye lakes. DNR hired guys to shoot them, it worked.