Subject: FW: evil terns vs. innocent salmon
Date: Jun 8 09:16:22 2001
From: Lauren Braden - LaurenB at seattleaudubon.org


I was asked to forward this response to Tweeters and Wayne...

-----Original Message-----
From: Helen Ross
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 1:59 PM
To: Lauren Braden; 'Richard Smith (E-mail)'
Subject: RE: evil terns vs. innocent salmon

Wayne,
Thank you for your insight into these issues. Seattle Audubon Society is
working diligently to protect Caspian Terns in Washington. We have filed a
lawsuit in federal court, with National Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife and
American Bird Conservancy, to force the Army Corps of Engineers to develop
an Environmental Impact Statement before proceeding with any action against
Caspian Terns.

In Seattle Audubon's opinion, it is unacceptable to displace Terns during
the nesting season and offer no alternative nesting sites. The federal
government needs to look critically and comprehensively at young salmon
survival in the Columbia. With thorough analysis, we think that it will
become clear that fish-eating birds are not the problem. Salmon are in
decline from numerous anthropogenic causes.

~Helen

Helen Ross, Conservation Coordinator
Seattle Audubon Society
8050 35th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98115
206-523-8243 ext. 13
helenr at seattleaudubon.org


-----Original Message-----
From: Lauren Braden
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 1:41 PM
To: Helen Ross; Richard Smith (E-mail)
Subject: FW: evil terns vs. innocent salmon



Helen - see Wayne's last paragraph... " I hope that local National Audubon
Society chapters and
other environmental groups will take up the cause of the terns," and please
craft a response that I can forward, just to let everyone know we ARE taking
up the cause.

thank you! -Lauren

-----Original Message-----
From: WAYNE WEBER [mailto:contopus at home.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 12:04 PM
To: TWEETERS
Cc: VANBIRDS; OBOL; DENNIS R. PAULSON
Subject: Re: evil terns vs. innocent salmon


Tweeters and others,

Dennis Paulson's analysis of the politics of the Caspian Tern
situation, although harsh, may be accurate. It certainly seems to be
true that the birds at Commencement Bay were eating far more
hatchery-raised salmon than salmon from wild stocks.

Here in British Columbia, there are also serious conservation concerns
about many salmon stocks, although overall, they are not in such
desperate shape as many stocks spawning in Washington. In 1977,
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (a federal agency which has jurisdiction
over salmon) began an ambitious project called the Salmonid
Enhancement Program. The focus of this was a hatchery program to boost
production of many threatened salmon stocks. In the ensuing 24 years,
fisheries biologists have realized, for the most part, that hatchery
releases are only a stopgap measure to prevent extinction of stocks.
Long-term recovery needs to be based on habitat restoration and
management of catches, not on artificially augmenting production with
hatchery releases. The hatchery program has been greatly cut back,
with more and more emphasis on promoting recovery of wild stocks by
enhancing and restoring habitats. Obviously, the same lessons have not
been learned in Washington.

What is deplorable about the situation in Washington is that there
does not seem to be anywhere in the western part of the state where
Caspian Terns are welcome as a breeding species. The colony that
flourished for several years at the Everett naval base was on military
property on the mainland, and it was considered more important to
allow the Navy to build new facilities there than to allow the
Caspians (and Arctic Terns!) to continue to nest there. They were not
welcome in Tacoma, first because they were nesting on a pile of
contaminated soil, and then because they were eating salmon. The
biggest nesting colony in the state, in the Columbia River estuary,
was forced to move from one islet to another because they were eating
too many salmon. When is this never-ending harassment of terns going
to stop?

One of the problems of managing Caspian Terns is that, unlike
Glaucous-winged Gulls and some other larid species, they do not nest
(at least in Washington) on rocky islets which are used decade after
decade, and which can therefore be offered protection as a nesting
site. Caspian Terns have a low "site fidelity", and it is in the
nature of the species to change colony locations frequently. The
earliest nesting sites in western Washington were on small islets in
Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor, which were subject to overwash by storms
in some years, and were not really suitable as long-term nesting
sites. Caspian Terns are quick to take advantage of new potential
nesting sites, but also quick to abandon them (after a few years) if
conditions become unsuitable.

The result of this low site fidelity is that when terns occupy new
nesting sites, as in Everett and Tacoma, they are regarded as
interlopers, rather than as an established breeding species that has
every right to be there. Even if they nest on a site where they do not
appear to be causing problems, there is no guarantee they would still
be nesting there 10 years from now.

If I am not mistaken, the Tacoma colony was the only one currently
active in the Puget Sound area. It is disgraceful if we cannot allow
Caspian Terns to breed unmolested somewhere in the Sound.

We can discuss this subject all we like on Tweeters, but in order to
change public attitudes, a much broader public discussion needs to be
opened up. I hope that local National Audubon Society chapters and
other environmental groups will take up the cause of the terns, and
lobby for some common-sense solutions to this admittedly difficult
problem.


Wayne C. Weber, Ph.D.
114-525 Dalgleish Drive
Kamloops, BC V2C 6E4
contopus at home.com


----- Original Message -----
From: Dennis Paulson <dpaulson at ups.edu>
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 3:24 PM
Subject: evil terns vs. innocent salmon


> I don't recall whether anyone actually commented on this in the
brief
> exchange about Caspian Terns and salmon, but I'm here in Tacoma
where the
> action is, and Gary Shugart (a Caspian Tern expert) and I have been
> discussing this issue virtually every day.
>
> One thing that should be made clear is that the slogan Save our
Salmon
> should much more accurately read Save our Hatcheries. Wild salmon
make up
> an increasingly small proportion of the fish out there, I would say
a
> vanishingly small proportion of what the terns are eating (there is
the
> thought that hatchery fish are more likely to be taken than their
wild
> relatives). I think the hullabaloo about the terns is based purely
on
> economics, the selfish motives of powerful groups. I would
challenge the
> people who manage fisheries to show proof that Caspian Terns are a
clear
> and present danger to "endangered" salmonid stocks. The
Commencement Bay
> birds were dispersed purely and simply because they were eating the
> Puyallup Tribe's hatchery salmon, and to add the phrase "as well as
some of
> the (Endangered Species Act) listed stocks" is merely to try to put
a
> better face on a despicable act.
>
> What's the deal here? Are the tribes and the state and federal
agencies
> waging full-scale war against the fish-eating birds of the Northwest
> because they're eating hatchery salmon? Is that how much respect we
pay to
> not only the value of nature but also the laws of our land, such as
the
> Migratory Bird Treaty Act, that protect these birds? I really
didn't
> realize it could be so easy to go out and slaughter protected birds
> wholesale (that's how I would define the destruction of 1000 eggs,
the
> majority of which were viable) based entirely on economic
factors--but I
> concede I've always been a bit naive about how human society works.
>
> Dennis Paulson, Director phone
253-879-3798
> Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-879-3352
> University of Puget Sound e-mail
dpaulson at ups.edu
> Tacoma, WA 98416
> http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html
>
>