7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MAY 25, 2015
Cormorants: Groups fail to
get judge to stop bird killings
Continued from Page 1A
Photo Courtesy of Petty Officer 3rd Class Jonathan Klingenberg
U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Brian Anderson, left, received a
Meritorious Service Medal for his two years on the cutter
Alert. During a change of command Friday, Anderson had
thanks for his crew and flowers for his wife.
Culver: Vice Adm.
Charles Ray presided
over the event
Continued from Page 1A
Presiding over the event
was Vice Adm. Charles Ray,
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overseeing Coast Guard opera-
tions from the western U.S. to
the eastern shores of Africa.
“When you’re running a
47-year-old ship, leadership
makes a difference,” Ray said
of the elder ship, its keel laid
in 1968 before it was commis-
sioned in 1969.
Ray praised Anderson for
his two years on the Alert, in-
cluding missions from Wash-
ington state to South America.
Ray presented Anderson with
a Meritorious Service Medal.
$QGHUVRQKDGÀRZHUVDQGRWK-
er gifts for his wife and chil-
dren.
During Anderson’s time
on the Alert, its crew helped
enforce the right-of-way on
the Columbia River during the
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snagged sea turtles, captured
drug runners and shipments of
cocaine, rescued adrift Ecua-
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with the Mexican Navy and
other forces. While under An-
derson’s command, the Alert’s
crew of more than 70 also
earned the coveted Battle ‘E’
award for operational excel-
lence, earning 96 percent on
operational readiness tests in
Everett, Wash., in 2013.
“You’re my family, and I’ll
miss you,” Anderson said to his
crew, assembled under the tent
for the transfer of command.
As well as changing com-
mand of the cutter Alert, An-
derson and Culver traded ad-
ministrative and at-sea jobs and
the East for the West Coast,
respectively.
Culver comes from his pre-
vious position in Portsmouth,
Va., as deputy of cutter forces
on the East Coast. He has expe-
rience on several Coast Guard
cutters over his tenure, includ-
ing the Point Arena, Salvia,
Taney, Ocracoke and Daunt-
less.
Anderson heads to Ports-
mouth to work in the naviga-
tion and sensors division of
the Command, Control, and
Communications Engineering
Center.
Culver, who has three adult
children and two grandchil-
dren, kept his introduction
brief. To Anderson, he added
“fair winds and following
seas to your family.”
An environmental impact
statement calls for them to
shoot adult birds, spray eggs
with oil so they won’t hatch,
and destroy nests. Carcasses
of dead birds will be donated
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institutions, or otherwise dis-
posed of through burial or in-
cineration.
Biologists blame the cor-
morants for eating an average
12 million baby salmon a year
as they migrate down the Co-
lumbia to the ocean. Some of
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species.
The cormorant population
on East Sand Island near Il-
waco, Wash., has grown from
about 100 pairs in 1989 to
some 14,000 pairs now, mak-
ing it the largest cormorant
nesting colony in the West.
Soil dredged from the bottom
of the Columbia to deepen
shipping channels was dumped
Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times via AP
Double-breasted cormorants on East Sand Island in the
Columbia River near Ilwaco, Wash., in 2011. Government
hunters have begun scouting an island at the mouth of
the Columbia River as they prepare to shoot thousands of
hungry seabirds to reduce the numbers of baby salmon
they eat.
on the island over the years,
expanding the area available
for nesting.
Conservation groups failed
in a bid to get a federal judge to
stop the killing, arguing dams
on the Columbia kill far more
young salmon than the birds
do.
Bob Sallinger, conservation
director of the Portland Audu-
bon Society, said Wildlife Ser-
vices and the corps should hold
off for this year after getting
started two months later than
recommended. The late start
would increase the suffering
of the birds by producing more
chicks that starve to death after
their parents are killed.
“I think this demonstrates
a remarkable level of indiffer-
ence and ineptitude,” he said.
Cormorants are the latest
birds targeted for eating baby
salmon. Biologists pushed
Caspian terns off Rice Island
in the Columbia, and creat-
ed nesting habitat in lakes in
eastern Oregon and San Fran-
cisco Bay to draw them away
from the mouth of the Colum-
bia.
The Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife also has
been shooting and harassing
cormorants on coastal rivers
to protect salmon.
Sea lions are also killed to
reduce the numbers of adult
salmon eaten as they wait to
JRRYHUWKH¿VKODGGHUDW%RQ-
neville Dam in the Columbia.
North Jetty repairs nearly a year ahead of schedule
By KATIE WILSON
EO Media Group
CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT, Wash.
— Contractors working on much-needed
repairs to a major jetty at the mouth of
the Columbia River are almost a year
ahead of schedule.
Jetties are dangerous places, waves
crash into and over them, and contrac-
tors working on them have to shut down
operations when bad weather is on the
way. But the West Coast’s mild winter
meant relatively few delays to work on
the 2.5-mile long North Jetty at Cape
Disappointment State Park — part of
the reason contractors are so far ahead
of schedule now, said Michelle Helms,
a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, which maintains the
three-jetty system at the mouth of the
river.
Work progressed steadily into a
strangely mild and warm April and early
May.
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been trundling down State Route 100
with massive granite rocks weighing up
to 30 tons each strapped down on their
beds, carrying them to North Jetty.
At the start of the project last year,
the corps hoped to start bringing these
jetty stones this spring, but that was an
“at the earliest” kind of estimate. They
expected to still have contractors in the
park and working on critical repairs to
North Jetty into 2016. Now, it appears
work could easily wrap up by October.
On May 13, corps staff was en route
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of contractors completed before Spring
Break this year. They stopped to brief
members of the Ilwaco Merchants who
were meeting that morning on their prog-
ress at the jetty.
unaware that an excavator was working
almost directly above them.
Blumh said the corps and its contrac-
tors are working closely with park rang-
ers and have their own security mea-
sures in place. However, the repairs will
make the jetty easier to access and will
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Both North and South Jetty have been
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their construction.
“I’m sure there will be persistent
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EDFN WR WUDGLWLRQDO ¿VKLQJ DUHDV´ VDLG
Ed Saldana, North Jetty critical repairs
project quality assurance representative.
Safety reminder
North Jetty is still slated to undergo a
more complete rehabilitation beginning
in 2017, work that could run through
2020. At the same time, rehabilitation
work will begin on the much older and
much longer South Jetty in Oregon’s Fort
Stephens State Park.
Rehabilitation work on Washington’s
Jetty A, a one-mile-long jetty located
southeast of North Jetty, begins this year
and is expected to continue through 2017.
Corps Project Manager Eric Bluhm
reminded the group that the jetty is not a
safe place to be even under the best con-
ditions. Even though much of the area
is marked off as a construction zone,
park visitors sometimes still wander too
close.
At low tide recently, two women
wandered down from a nearby camp-
ing area and were sitting on the jetty,
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