Columbia/Snake Ports, Growers Weigh In On Dam-Breaching Plan

Columbia/Snake Ports, Growers Weigh In On Dam-Breaching Plan – The Waterways Journal

APRIL 9, 2021  BY DAVID MURRAY

A letter of concern signed by a broad coalition of more than 40 agricultural groups, ports and other river stakeholders along the Columbia/Snake river system is opposing a plan to breach four Snake River dams to protect spawning salmon. The plan was proposed by Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho and includes compensation for farmers and others that would be hurt by the plan. The letter, addressed to key members of Congress and available as a template, was released March 26. The letter says that while the plan wouldn’t do much to protect salmon, it would likely devastate wheat growers and other agricultural interests in the region that depend on cheap barge transportation.

According to Simpson’s plan, the first dam breaching of the Lower Granite Dam would happen in 2030. Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Ice Harbor dams would follow by 2031. The $33 billion plan would essentially reorder the entire transportation structure of the region.  Simpson announced his plan in early February in a video on his website. Much of the money would go to compensate interests, including farmers, injured by the closures. 

The Pacific Northwest states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and parts of Montana grow wheat for export to 20 Asian Pacific Rim nations and elsewhere. According to U.S. Wheat Associates, a wheat-export marketing organization, U.S. farmers produce about 1.9 billion bushels of wheat a year, with about 500 Panamax-sized ships-worth a year exported. 

In the PNW, that wheat is barged down the Columbia/Snake system. Without the cost savings of barge transportation, it’s unlikely PNW wheat would remain competitive. About 60 percent of the cargo that moves on the Snake River is high-quality U.S. wheat grown in the region. Nearly 10 percent of all U.S. wheat exports travel by barge on the Snake River each year. The remaining 40 percent of the cargoes on the Snake are fuel products, fertilizers, wood products and large industrial components like wind turbine parts and other project cargo.Sign up for Waterway Journal’s weekly newsletter.Our weekly newsletter delivers the latest inland marine news straight to your inbox including breaking news, our exclusive columns and much more.Your EmailEmail AddressSubscribe

The letter was signed by the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, Pacific Northwest Grain & Feed Association, Oregon Wheat Growers League, the Idaho Wheat Commission, the Idaho Farm Bureau, the Montana Grain Growers Association and other ag groups, including the National Association of Wheat Growers. It was also signed by every river port, including the ports of Benton, Chinook, Clarkston, Ilwaco, Kalama, Lewiston, Longview, Morrow, Pasco and Royal Slope, as well as the American Waterways Operators and the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association.

Wouldn’t Fix Spawning Concerns

The letter addresses the concerns about spawning salmon that led to the proposal. The letter points out that studies have shown a broad decline in spawning salmon populations along the whole West Coast, including in free-flowing rivers without any dams. The causes for this decline are debated; some scientists attribute it to ocean acidification and other changes in the ocean environment brought about by climate change.

“While we share Representative Simpson’s concerns about poor smolt-to-adult returns (SARs) for the Snake River, there is no scientific evidence that breaching the lower Snake River dams will address that problem in a meaningful way,” the letter says. It claims the Lower Snake River already has 95 percent free passage for salmon. 

Environmental Impact

The dams are crucial for providing clean power to the Bonneville Power Administration, which has estimated that replacing the emissions-free hydropower with other sustainable and emissions-free sources would cost the region $16 billion over a 20-year span, raising its wholesale rates by 50 percent and the average public power customer’s electricity bills by 25 percent, and would double the risk of power outages.

Another “brown” effect of this closure would be to increase emissions by trucks and rail. “Over 38,000 rail cars or over 149,000 semi-trucks would be needed to move the cargo that went by barge in 2018, assuming that many trucks, drivers, locomotives and rail cars could be sourced, and highways and rail lines through the sensitive airshed of the Columbia River Gorge could accommodate the additional traffic. The impact to the environment cannot be overstated. … Shifting cargo from Snake River barging to truck and rail will result in significant annual increases in emissions, as follows: over 860,000 tons of CO2, 306.5 tons of NOx, 7.5 tons of PM, 69.7 tons of CO, and 7 tons of VOC,” according to the letter.

The letter concludes, “We strongly support science-based salmon recovery solutions that address the myriad threats to Northwest fish runs over every part of their life cycle. Though we do not question Rep. Simpson’s commitment to salmon, this proposal continues the narrow focus on four run-of-river dams with some of the highest fish passage numbers in our region. It is a speculative and costly plan that assumes we must choose between productive, fish-friendly federal projects and our Northwest salmon and steelhead runs.”

Fortunately for PNW ag interests, the plan has attracted little support in Congress; there is not yet a bill including the plan, and its chances of passage are slim, according to observers.

The full letter is available at www.wawg.org/coalition-letter-supporting-dams-goes-out-to-regional-legislators/.

The Shameful Reality of Aquatic Torture and Death Pens

ANIMALSAUSTRALIA.ORG

Life can be so bad for farmed fish they literally lose the will to live

Underwater factory farms are condemning fish to live “on the edge of what they can tolerate”.

• The Shameful Reality of Aquatic Torture and Death Pens

  Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

  One of the things that has troubled me for many years is the way that we treat the fishes of the sea.

  As a species we deny and ignore their sentience. We dismiss them as living beings and refuse to comprehend that these animals think, that they suffer, that they have emotions.

  We literally vacuum them from the sea using highly mechanized machinery to scour the bottom of the sea, to trap them in huge nets or to ensnare them in hooks on long lines that can stretch over a hundred miles across the waves. We suffocate them, we crush them, we tear open their mouth with savage hooks and mutilate their delicate gills in plastic curtains of death and destruction.

  For fish there are no safe places. We have invaded their homes and ravaged their lives, destroyed them by the billions and polluted their habitats.

  And to add insult to injury, not content to murder them in their homes we now breed them in massive confinement facilities that literally fill the air with the stench of decay and death as they spew toxins, parasites and viruses into once pristine eco-systems.

  A Haida elder once told me that salmon farms were a perversion of the spirit of the salmon.

  What we do to them by raising them in concentration camps is obscene.

  We abuse them, we assault them with chemicals, we force them to consume dye in the food pellets to actually dye the flesh pinkish while they are alive. We inject them with antibiotics and force them into toxic chemical baths. We scour the sea to catch millions of other fish from other species to render into cheap fish meal to feed them. We see hundreds of thousands of them die off as the farms collect insurance for the losses and then we send them to market after slicing off the cancerous growths so that humans can have cheap salmon.

  As a species, we cruelly accept that the viruses and parasites that these mass incarceration facilities produce gets transmitted to wild indigenous species of salmon and that the diminishment of wild salmon means the diminishment of food for Orcas, Eagles, Bears, Seals and so many other species of wild sentient creatures.

  These fish that are bred in these horrific facilities are living, self-aware sentient beings that we force into unbearably miserable confines and it takes a toll in suffering and death, pollution and ugliness.

  These shameful facilities degrade not just the salmon but also ourselves.

  They need to be shut down in every eco-system that these companies have invaded.

The largest bears in the world use small streams to fatten up on salmon

NEWS RELEASE 19-DEC-2019

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

CORVALLIS, Ore. – It’s a familiar scene to anyone who’s watched footage of brown bears catching sockeye salmon in Alaska: They’re standing knee-deep in a rushing river, usually near a waterfall, and grabbing passing fish with their paws or jaws.

But a new study published in the journal Conservation Letters reveals a different picture of how and when bears eat salmon. Most of these bears, also known as grizzlies, are dipping into small streams to capture their iconic prey.

Using a foraging model based on the Wood River basin in southwest Alaska, a study team led by Oregon State University determined that while small-stream habitats have only about 20% of the available salmon in the watershed, they provide 50% of bear consumption of salmon.

“This tells us that populations of sockeye salmon that spawn in little streams are disproportionately important to bears,” said study lead author Jonny Armstrong, an ecologist at Oregon State University. “Bears profit from these small streams because they offer salmon at unique times of the season. To capitalize on plentiful salmon runs, bears need them to be spread across time.”

Small streams typically have cold water, which leads to populations of salmon that spawn much earlier in the season when no other populations are available to predators such as bears.

These results have potential consequences for how environmental impact assessments are conducted and evaluated for large projects such as the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

These reports typically focus on how the project will affect the abundance of salmon in lakes and rivers, but they usually overlook smaller habitats, Armstrong said.

“When people want to build a large mine, they think these streams don’t matter because they represent a small fraction a watershed, in terms of area or salmon abundance. In conservation and management, we generally place value on the largest runs of salmon at the expense of the smallest ones,” Armstrong said. “If we pose a different question and ask which habitats are important for the ecosystem, then small streams become particularly relevant.”

The researchers developed a mathematical model that explores how watershed development and commercial fisheries affect how many sockeye salmon are available to grizzlies. The model simulated different patterns of development and explored how they affected the number of salmon bears consumed.

Protecting large salmon runs at the expense of smaller ones turned out to be bad for bears.

“This causes the bears’ total salmon consumption to drop off faster compared to strategies that protected small salmon runs and the early feeding opportunities they offer to bears,” Armstrong said. “If you impair these areas, you may only reduce the total number of salmon by a little, but the number of salmon that end up in bear’s stomachs – you could reduce that a lot.”

According to the study authors, there are two significant reasons why the largest bears in the world are drawn to small streams to eat salmon.

First, the fish in these streams are easy to catch for adult and juvenile grizzlies. And second, because the water is colder than in lakes and rivers, salmon spawn in them earlier – probably to give their eggs more time to incubate, the authors said. So, the fish are plentiful by the first week of July – making them the first places bears fish after they emerge from hibernation.

“When they come out of hibernation, the bears are just scraping by and barely making it,” Armstrong said. “Having these streams means they can start eating salmon in early July, which is about six weeks before the river- and lake-salmon populations start spawning and become available to bears. It’s an incredible foraging opportunity for bears.”

Armstrong added, “I’m sure that native Alaskans who subsisted on salmon were keenly aware of this, too.”

###

Armstrong is an assistant professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

Collaborators on the study included Daniel Schindler, professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington; Curry Cunningham, research fisheries biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks; Will Deacy, a former postdoctoral researcher at OSU now at the U.S. National Park Service; and Patrick Walsh, supervisory fish and wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Togiak National Wildlife Refuge.

Funding for the study was provided by the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and funds from the Alaska salmon processing industry that support the University of Washington’s Alaska Salmon Program.

—

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IPCC

“Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

First sentence of IPPC Special Report on 1.5C Summary for Policy Makers.

<<https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/>>

***********************************************

Greta Thunberg

“So if we are to stay below the 1.5 degrees of warming limits …, we need to change almost everything.”

<<https://www.straight.com/news/1258421/video-swedish-teenager-greta-thunberg-urges-wealthy-people-stop-stealing-others-carbon>>

*****************************************

Forbes

“It’s time that everyone, from the humble homeowner to the highest levels of business and government, rethink their relationship with energy and take action. Relying on renewables alone won’t be enough.”
<<https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikehughes1/2019/08/02/climate-change-18-months-to-save-the-world/#166763c749bd>>

Some perspective on grizzlies and salmon

•  Author: Chris Genovali
   | Opinion

  , Misty MacDuffee

   | Opinion

  , Paul C. Paquet

   | Opinion
•  Updated: 3 days ago
•  Published 1 day ago
• https://www.adn.com/opinions/2019/12/01/some-perspective-on-grizzlies-and-salmon/

Brown bears at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park July 1, 2015 feast on sockeye s

The stark images of malnourished grizzly bears on the coast of British Columbia, Canada, have garnered widespread international media attention. The photographs are difficult to view and strike a chord of deep concern in most people.

Raincoast Conservation Foundation has long advocated for a wildlife welfare ethic when it comes to the conservation and management of large carnivores. This approach becomes even more compelling when the life requisites, in this case wild salmon, of species such as coastal grizzlies are diminished as a result of human activities.

Much of the news coverage associated with the aforementioned situation has been linked to climate change, but this particular salmon run collapse is likely the result of a suite of influences, not the least of which is the failure to protect wild salmon in British Columbia from fishing pressure, habitat degradation, hatchery impacts, fish farms and more.

Wild salmon and grizzly bears have an intertwined relationship and the choices we make are inextricably linked to their fates. When salmon are plentiful in coastal streams, bears thrive and produce more cubs. Grizzlies also occur at higher densities and grow to larger sizes when salmon are abundant. Importantly, when salmon are plentiful, bears eat less of each fish, selecting the nutrient-rich brains and eggs and casting aside the remainder. These salmon remains then feed other animals, scavengers and fertilize the adjacent streamside zone. Thus, abundant salmon boosts the amount and value of food for bears, as well as transfers more nutrients and energy to other wild consumers.

In contrast, when salmon are scarce, grizzlies produce fewer cubs, if any, and eat more of each individual fish. Less discarded salmon enters the surrounding ecosystem with diminished benefits for other wildlife, plants, and less visible organisms such as fungi, algae, and insects. Commercial salmon fisheries typically extract 50% or more of the salmon bound for rivers, bears and forests. When the number of salmon returning to spawn from their ocean migration is variable, fishery managers favor the short-term benefit of harvest, even when salmon abundance is low and even if it means forgoing larger harvests in the future. Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans manages for spawner persistence, not for healthy, abundant spawning runs.

Despite the knowledge that many species depend on salmon, humans have never managed fisheries with wildlife in mind.

Whether it’s bears, wolves or whales, many coastal species have evolved to rely on annual returns of Pacific salmon. But how are the food needs of these animals considered in fisheries management or the benefits of salmon managed for coastal ecosystems? Bottom line: they aren’t.

Contemporary thinking in conservation science instructs salmon management to include the bears, whales and other wildlife that have an evolutionary reliance on the annual pulse of nutrients and food energy delivered via spawning salmon. Even Canada’s Wild Salmon Policy recognizes the need for management to transcend salmon ‘production’ alone and consider the needs of terrestrial species.

For this policy to be consequential, however, it requires fisheries managers to consider bears and other wildlife by lowering catches and allowing more salmon to reach the rivers to spawn. Currently, humans engage in what ecologists call “exploitative competition,” — we capture salmon en route to spawning grounds before they can reach awaiting carnivores. Even salmon runs that spawn in protected watersheds and parks are subjected to exploitation by commercial fisheries. Often, these parks were created to protect species such as grizzlies, black bears and wolves. As such, we suspect that grizzly bears now receive a fraction of the salmon they evolved with, which ultimately manifests in population declines through repeated years of low birth rates.

In some areas, we believe it is time to establish truly protected salmon runs – runs that would be managed solely for their importance to wildlife and ecosystems. This would allow salmon to return to spawning grounds without encountering the nets and hooks of the Pacific salmon fleet. And those fish would then spawn in rivers that flow naturally without their watersheds logged, developed or otherwise impaired.

Of course, it is not just fishing nets and hooks that rob wildlife of their energy needs. Degraded freshwater and marine habitat, fish farms and disease, dams and diversions, hatcheries and genetic dilution, climate change and changing ocean conditions, all influence salmon abundance. Human generated impacts that reduce salmon abundance must be addressed. However, reducing, and in some cases eliminating, exploitation from fisheries would have an immediate, positive effect on coastal wildlife.

Chris Genovali is executive director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation. Misty MacDuffee is Raincoast’s Wild Salmon Program Director and Paul Paquet is Raincoast’s senior scientist.

Island Voices: The evolutionary links between grizzlies and salmon

Chris Genovali , Misty MacDuffee and Paul C. Paquet / Times Colonist

NOVEMBER 10, 2019 06:00 AM

https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/op-ed/island-voices-the-evolutionary-links-between-grizzlies-and-salmon-1.24002520





A grizzly bear catches a salmon in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Photograph By LARRY TRAVIS/RAINCOAST

The stark images of malnourished grizzly bears on the coast of British Columbia have garnered widespread media attention. The photographs are difficult to view and strike a chord of deep concern in most people.

Raincoast Conservation Foundation has long advocated for a wildlife welfare ethic when it comes to the conservation and management of large carnivores. This approach becomes even more compelling when the life requisites, in this case wild salmon, of species such as coastal grizzlies are diminished as a result of human activities.

Much of the news coverage associated with the aforementioned situation has been linked to climate change, but this particular salmon-run collapse is likely the result of a suite of influences, not the least of which is the failure to protect wild salmon in B.C. from fishing pressure, habitat degradation, hatchery impacts, fish farms and more.

Wild salmon and grizzly bears have an intertwined relationship, and the choices we make are inextricably linked to their fates. When salmon are plentiful in coastal streams, bears thrive and produce more cubs. Grizzlies also occur at higher densities and grow to larger sizes when salmon are abundant.

Importantly, when salmon are plentiful, bears eat less of each fish, selecting the nutrient-rich brains and eggs and casting aside the remainder. These salmon remains then feed other animals, scavengers, and fertilize the adjacent streamside zone. Thus, abundant salmon boosts the amount and value of food for bears, as well as transfers more nutrients and energy to other wild consumers.

In contrast, when salmon are scarce, grizzlies produce fewer cubs, if any, and eat more of each individual fish. Less discarded salmon enters the surrounding ecosystem with diminished benefits for other wildlife, plants and less-visible organisms such as fungi, algae and insects. Commercial salmon fisheries typically extract 50 per cent or more of the salmon bound for rivers, bears and forests.

When the number of salmon returning to spawn from their ocean migration is variable, fishery managers favour the short-term benefit of harvest, even when salmon abundance is low and even if it means forgoing larger harvests in the future. The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans manages for spawner persistence, not for healthy, abundant spawning runs.

Despite the knowledge that many species depend on salmon, fisheries have never been managed with wildlife in mind.

Whether its bears, wolves or whales, many coastal species have evolved to rely on annual returns of Pacific salmon. But how are the food needs of these animals considered in fisheries management or the benefits of salmon managed for coastal ecosystems? Bottom line: they aren’t.

Contemporary thinking in conservation science instructs salmon management to include the bears, whales and other wildlife that have an evolutionary reliance on the annual pulse of nutrients and food energy delivered via spawning salmon. Even Canada’s Wild Salmon Policy recognizes the need for management to transcend salmon “production” alone and consider the needs of terrestrial species.

For this policy to be consequential however, it requires fisheries managers to consider bears and other wildlife by lowering catches and allowing more salmon to reach the rivers to spawn. Currently, humans engage in what ecologists call “exploitative competition,” i.e. we capture salmon en route to spawning grounds before they can reach awaiting carnivores.

Even salmon runs that spawn in protected watersheds and parks are subjected to exploitation by commercial fisheries. Often, these parks were created to protect species such as grizzlies, black bears and wolves. As such, we suspect that grizzly bears now receive a fraction of the salmon they evolved with, which ultimately manifests in population declines through repeated years of low birth rates.

In some areas, we believe it is time to establish truly protected salmon runs — runs that would be managed solely for their importance to wildlife and ecosystems. This would allow salmon to return to spawning grounds without encountering the nets and hooks of the Pacific salmon fleet. And those fish would then spawn in rivers that flow naturally without their watersheds logged, developed or otherwise impaired.

Of course, it is not just fishing nets and hooks that rob wildlife of their energy needs. Degraded freshwater and marine habitat, fish farms and disease, dams and diversions, hatcheries and genetic dilution, climate change and changing ocean conditions, all influence salmon abundance. Human-generated impacts that reduce salmon abundance must be addressed. However, reducing, and in some cases eliminating, exploitation from fisheries would have an immediate, positive effect on coastal wildlife.

Chris Genovali is executive director of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation. Misty MacDuffee is Raincoast’s Wild Salmon Program director and Paul C. Paquet is Raincoast’s senior scientist.

Farmed salmon laced with poisons, study finds

LUMA MUHTADIE

PUBLISHED JANUARY 8, 2004UPDATED APRIL 19, 2018

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/farmed-salmon-laced-with-poisons-study-finds/article1125684/

Farm-raised salmon contain substantially higher levels of PCBs and other potentially cancer-causing industrial pollutants than their wild counterparts, a new study has says.

Researchers at Indiana University measured the levels of 14 toxic compounds, called organochlorines, in about 700 North American, South American and European salmon and discovered that farm-raised Atlantic salmon had “significantly higher levels of 13 toxins compared with wild Pacific salmon.”

The researchers, whose findings are published in Friday’s journal Science, did not study farmed Pacific salmon or wild Atlantic salmon as fish from these groups are rare.

The average dioxin level in farm-raised salmon was 11 times higher than that in wild salmon – 1.88 parts per billion compared with 0.17 ppb. For PCBs, the average was 36.6 ppb in farm-raised salmon, compared with 4.75 in wild salmon.

Overall, salmon farmed in Europe had significantly higher levels of toxicity than salmon farmed in North America or South America, the study said.

Farmed salmon from Scotland and Denmark’s Faroe Islands registered the highest levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, toxaphene and dieldrin — the four toxins thought to have the greatest impact on human health. Farmed salmon from Chile and Washington state registered the lowest levels of these four toxins.

The researchers point to “salmon chow” – a mix of ground up fish and oil fed to farm-raised salmon – as a likely cause of toxicity.

Farmed salmon eat lots of fish oil and meal made from just a few species of ocean fish, which concentrates the contaminants they are exposed to, while wild salmon eat a greater variety, David Carpenter, one of the researchers told the Associated Press.

But several farmers in the United States, Canada and Chile are beginning to replace the fish oil in the feed with soybean and canola oil.

Based on their findings, the researchers recommend that farmed salmon bought in Toronto supermarkets (as well as those in San Francisco, Boston, London, Oslo London, Paris, Edinburgh and Frankfurt) not be consumed in quantities of more than one half to one meal a month. Eight ounces of uncooked fish constitutes one meal.

Farmed salmon bought in Vancouver supermarkets (along with those in London, Washington D.C., Seattle, Chicago and New York) should not be eaten in more than two meals per month.

People who can consume more than the recommended amounts, which are based on strict guidelines established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, could slightly increase their risk of developing cancer later in life. The same guidelines allow wild salmon to be consumed in quantities of up to eight meals per month.

Purdue University researcher and nutritionist Dr. Charles Santerre says he agrees with the overall findings of the study, but disagrees with its conclusion that consumers should limit their intake of farmed salmon because of increased cancer risk, noting the heart benefits of the fish, which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

“The study shows that the cancer risk from eating large amounts of salmon is significantly lower than the risk of developing heart disease from not eating generous amounts of the fish,” Dr. Santerre said.

He also recommends farm-raised or wild salmon for pregnant and nursing mothers as an ideal source of nutrients for a developing fetus and infant and says salmon it is one of the safest fish on the market.

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Grizzly experts want research into emaciated bears photographed on B.C. coast

Photos of bears concerned scientists, who said they could be suffering due to a poor salmon return. There could be other explanations.

NICK EAGLAND

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/grizzly-bear-populations

Updated: October 9, 2019

Starving bear walks along the riverside in Thompson Sound on the west coast. Photo: Rolf Hicker. ROLF HICKER / PNG

SHAREADJUSTCOMMENTPRINT

Grizzly experts disturbed by photos of emaciated bears in Knight Inlet are calling for research to determine why they are suffering.

Photos of a sow and two cubs taken by wildlife photographer and tour guide Rolf Hicker raised alarms for some scientists, who said the bears were likely suffering due to an abysmal Pacific salmon return this year. Federal fisheries experts have pointed to climate change as the main reason for the poor return, and salmon are crucial to coastal grizzly bears’ diets.

Longtime grizzly researchers say a salmon shortage is the most obvious explanation for why the bears in Hickers’ photos are suffering, but said there could be other factors.

Dr. Ken Macquisten, a wildlife veterinarian and managing director for the Grouse Mountain wildlife refuge, said he was shocked by the photos. Had only a single bear been suffering, he would have questioned whether it had broken teeth or an intestinal blockage.

“But multiple bears would tend to point to some common reason, and a lack of food would be top of the suspect list, in my mind,” said Macquisten, who is a director for the Grizzly Bear Foundation.

Starving grizzly bear in Hoeya Sound. Photo: Rolf Hicker ROLF HICKER / PNG

Macquisten said grizzly bear researchers are concerned about B.C.’s salmon supply. The fish are crucial to west coast bears during their hyperphagic stage before hibernation, when an adult will eat 50,000-60,000 calories of food and gain three to four pounds each day. They are omnivores and also typically eat whitebark pine nuts, insects and berries.

But if they don’t eat enough before hibernation, they will wake up early and be forced to search for food during winter when it is scarce, he said. They could die of starvation.

“Because they can range over large areas, typically the bears will be able to go to somewhere else where the food is, so it’s a bit surprising why these (photographed) bears are in such a state,” he said. “Either they haven’t been able to find food over a wide area or they haven’t been moving.”

But Macquisten urged caution before drawing the conclusion that a salmon shortage is to blame, and said he hopes someone will locate one of the suffering grizzly bears to determine the exact cause.

The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said provincial biologists can’t confirm why the sow in Hicker’s photo appears to be in such poor shape.

The biologists don’t know its history and whether age, dental issues, injuries, or providing for cubs contributed to its state, the ministry said in an emailed reply to questions.

“The number of bears on the coast are stable to increasing and this often means more competition for resources,” the ministry said. “If salmon runs in the area are lower than expected, this will have an added effect and bears may have to travel further to find food.”

Government representatives are working with the Mamalilikulla First Nation to monitor the welfare of wildlife in the area.

The B.C. government has estimated 15,000 grizzly bears are in the province and said roughly 340 die each year of human-related causes. Of the 56 grizzly populations in B.C., nine are classified as threatened.

Dr. Cole Burton, an associate professor in the Department of Forest Resources Management at the University of B.C., also called for research into whether a poor salmon return and climate change are impacting the wellbeing of some bear populations.

“If we’re concerned about grizzly bears and how they might be responding to these changes, then we should try and support some more study on that, some more monitoring that’s tied to our management actions,” Burton said.

He wouldn’t jump to the conclusion, from the photos, that the suffering grizzly bears represent more widespread suffering, he said.

“It’s certainly consistent with these ideas around a reduction in salmon,” said Burton, who is the Canada Research Chair in Terrestrial Mammal Conservation. “But on its own, I don’t think it provides much evidence of the bigger-picture trends.”

Burton said that grizzly bear populations in B.C. are generally doing okay, but not thriving, mainly due to habitat loss caused by development and roadbuilding.

The government’s ban on grizzly bear trophy hunting in 2017 may have increased the number of bears’ competing for food, Burton said. Prior to the ban, an average of 297 grizzly bears were legally killed by hunters annually, according to provincial data.

“I’m not saying that that’s what we’re seeing here, but certainly we would want to know about the population,” Burton said.

Clayton Lamb, a PhD candidate and Vanier Scholar at the University of Alberta, has been working with grizzly bears for six years and is currently researching their population dynamics.

A poor salmon run is a “reasonable” explanation for the sow to be malnourished, Lamb said. But when salmon populations are low, grizzlies tend to move elsewhere in search of berries, and he wondered whether the bears in the photographs have that option.

“I think a couple of pictures don’t give us that larger population context,” he said.

Lamb said climate models for grizzly populations in B.C.’s Interior suggest that berries and other diet staples could, in fact, become more abundant as the climate changes.

“As far as food and climate change for bears, it’s not immediately concerning,” he said. “There’s undoubtedly going to be winners and losers in climate change, and I think it just so happens that some of those key berry species are going to be winners.”

Bryce Casavant, a former conservation officer who is now conservation policy analyst with non-profit conservation organization Pacific Wild, said Hicker’s photos serves as a reminder that human behaviour can have an impact on wildlife.

“What we do know is there is food scarcity, currently, within the Great Bear Rainforest and coastal regions of B.C., which is causing problems for grizzly bears,” said Casavant, a PhD candidate at Royal Roads University.

“Salmon runs have declined, their ability to access natural food sources has decline. Habitat loss is a serious contributing factor to grizzly bear population recovery and stability.”

B.C. First Nation feeds hungry grizzlies 500 salmon carcasses

• https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mamalilikulla-first-nation-feeding-starving-grizzlies-1.5305820

‘I’m hoping it’s not too little too late,’ says Mamalilikulla First Nation chief councillor

CBC News · Posted: Oct 02, 2019 1:13 PM PT | Last Updated: October 2

The Mamalilikulla First Nation delivered salmon to grizzly bears in their traditional territories where they are known to feed. (File pictures/Canadian Press)

When Richard Sumner saw how emaciated the grizzly bears were in his neck of the woods, he knew something had to be done.

Sumner, chief councillor of the Mamalilikulla First Nation, says the creeks and streams on the nation’s territory, which  encompass the islands off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island between Alert Bay and Knight Inlet, are no longer rich with salmon, and resident bears are starving and travelling outside traditional hunting grounds in a desperate effort to find food.

So the Mamalilikulla people fed them.

The nation’s Guardian Watchmen Manager, Jake Smith, had a local hatchery donate approximately 500 salmon carcasses and members of the nation took the fish to estuary areas where grizzlies are known to feed.

“I’m hoping it’s not too little too late,” said Sumner in a phone interview on CBC’s On The Island, adding there are many other areas of British Columbia where bears that depend on salmon are hungry.

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Migrating for meals

He said grizzlies are starting to travel between all the small islands in the area and are even making their way over to Vancouver Island in search of fish, something that rarely happened in the past.

“The lack of salmon is not a natural thing,” said Sumner, who blamed human activity such as deforestation and over-fishing for reducing salmon stocks to perilous levels.

Climate change resulting in warmer ocean temperatures has also been cited by marine scientists as a major factor in dwindling salmon stocks.

Sumner said while he understands humans should not interfere with wild animals, the Mamalilikulla people are the stewards of their territory and according to Sumner, the alternative was to watch the bears die.

“We just hope we can get enough bulk on them to last the winter,” said Sumner.

Some of the 400 members of the Mamalilikulla nation are suffering too.

“Nobody has any fish in their freezer or any canned fish for the winter,” he said. “It’s been a real disastrous year.”

Sumner does not know if more fish will be available for future deliveries.

Sumner said he is meeting Thursday with a bear biologist and provincial authorities to discuss the issue further.

To hear the complete interview with Richard Sumner, see the audio link below:

Feds Planning Mass Killing of Columbia River Cormorants

Paintings Courtesy Barry Kent MacKay

[Remember the birds next time you buy salmon or fish oil.]

Fri Jun 13, 2014.

Bye, bye birds 

Feds plan: Kill salmon-eating Sand Island seabirds

PORTLAND (AP) — Federal officials are proposing to kill half the large colony of cormorants in the Columbia River estuary because the large black seabirds eat too many young salmon and steelhead.

The proposal is the preferred action in a draft management plan released Thursday by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The colony of double-crested cormorants on East Sand Island near the mouth of the Columbia consumes about 11 million juvenile salmon per year as it migrates through the river to the Pacific Ocean. The fish are listed as endangered.

Officials say despite reductions in nesting habitat, the cormorant population has continued to thrive. It has increased from 100 breeding pairs in 1989 to about 15,000 breeding pairs today. That makes it the largest cormorant colony in western North America, representing over 40 percent of the region’s cormorant population.

The Corps has been studying the impact of avian predation on juvenile salmon in the Columbia since 1997. Officials also have looked into methods such as hazing with lights and using human presence to flush cormorants off potential nesting sites.

Now federal officials are proposing to reduce the colony to 5,600 breeding pairs by killing half of them, trying to scare off the others and taking their eggs.

The $1.5 million-a-year program, planned over four years, would arm federal trappers with silenced rifles and night-vision scopes to shoot the birds during their nesting season. They’d also cover eggs in oil to prevent them from hatching and inundate part of the island once the cormorant population reaches a target to limit nesting.

Once the target colony size is attained, the Corps also is proposing to modify the terrain of East Sand Island to inundate some nesting habitat.

The Corps passed over an alternative that would only use nonlethal methods, saying it would be less effective and push cormorants to nest elsewhere in the Columbia River estuary or in other coastal areas with endangered fish.

“That is a significant concern,” said Sondra Ruckwardt, the Army Corps’ project manager overseeing the plan. “We’re trying not to move the problem.”

Double-crested cormorants have orange faces and long necks, and are masters at diving to catch small fish. They are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and are native to the Columbia.

Federal officials also are trying to protect salmon by killing off sea lions — another protected species that has also proved too difficult to scare off with non-lethal methods.

The public has through Aug. 4 to comment on the cormorant plan.

What Happened to the Salmon

“What kind of person can cut an ancient forest to bloody stumps, bulldoze the meadows to mud, spray poison over the mess that’s left, and then set smudge fires in the slash? And when the wounded mountainside slumps into the river, floods tear apart the waterfalls and scour the spawning beds, and no salmon return, what kind of person can pronounce it an act of God — and then direct the bulldozers through the stream and into the next forest, and the next? I hope there’s a cave in hell for people like this, where an insane little demon hops around shouting, ‘jobs or trees, jobs or trees,’ and buries an ax blade in their knees every time they struggle to their feet.”
-Kathleen Dean Moore

…and then take it out on the seals and sea lions for feeding on the fish, as they’ve always done. This is what happened to the salmon spawning beds around here.