Subject: Caspian Tern predation on smolts
Date: Oct 24 16:26:33 1998
From: Charles Swift - charless at umich.edu


Tweeters,

We're hearing a lot dam breaching opponents making claims about Caspian Tern
predation on salmon/steelhead smolts as being a contributing factor to
declining Salmon/Snake River runs. An article today in the Spokane
Spokesman-Review claims 4 - 20 million (a pretty large margin of error!)
smolts per year being taken at the mouth of the Columbia R. by Caspian
Terns. I'm interested if anybody in tweeterland is aware of this research
and what folks' opinions of it are.

This number seems pretty high to me but even if predation is substantial I
don't think that it compares to the downstream mortality of smolts moving
through the 4 lower Snake River dams (which figures are also available if I
do some homework!) . I realize folks might have differing views on dam
breaching so I don't want to make this into a big debate about that but am
interested in this Caspian Tern issue.

Thanks much,
Charles.
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Charles E. Swift
charless at umich.edu
Moscow, Idaho
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