Northwest citizens demand results for their significant investment in fish and wildlife recovery.
The Council s role is to give those citizens a stronger voice in determining the future of fish and wildlife, and the severe impact by Caspian terns on the fish we are paying to produce and protect is simply not acceptable to us, Council Chair Todd Maddock of Lewiston, Idaho said. The world s largest colony of Caspian terns, a seabird that feeds on small fish, has nested in the Columbia River estuary in recent years, particularly on Rice Island about five miles upstream from Astoria, Oregon. Rice Island is maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a disposal site for sand dredged from the river s navigation channel and provides ideal habitat for Caspian terns, which prefer to nest on open sand. In its letter to Will Stelle, regional director of the Fisheries Service in Seattle, the Council urged the agency to consider all necessary actions to reduce the size of the tern population in the estuary. The Fisheries Service has authority for salmon and steelhead under the Endangered Species Act.