Corps’ War On Terns To Help Salmon

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is squaring off against a colony of Caspian terns in an effort to save salmon.

The idea is to keep 10,000 pairs of the terns from nesting on an island near the mouth of the Columbia River, where the birds feed their young by picking off millions of succulent young salmon smolts on their way to the sea.

To do this, the corps will make Rice Island a place the beach-loving birds find so repulsive that they’ll decide to nest elsewhere. The plan calls for planting shrubs and grass over the islet’s open stretches of sand, where the birds lay their eggs.

The unhappy terns, it is believed, will then turn left in their northward migration and fly about 15 miles west to another island, also near the mouth of the Columbia but away from the saltwater-freshwater line where smolts linger.

But first the corps has to attract the birds to East Sand Island, by making it a tern paradise. That entails spending $50,000 to remove vegetation and create 16 acres of beach, where terns can raise their families.