Why Officials Keep Wanting to Move This Ancient Salmon Killer

This ancient species of bird — with dark feathers, jewellike blue-green eyes, and distinctive orange-accented cheeks — is a dangerous predator to salmon.

Double-breasted cormorants can dive to a depth of nearly 25 feet, using their ducklike webbed feet to propel them on fishing expeditions. They can often be spotted drying themselves off after a hunt because their feathers have less of the oils that keep other birds dry. (Wetter feathers make them speedier swimmers.)

Fun facts:

• Females and males of the species look the same, unlike many other birds.
• Their fecal matter is so deadly it can kill the trees they live in; they just move to a new tree or create nests on the ground.

And they like eating fish, lots of fish. That’s how they come to be in the news.

As part of an effort to protect salmon, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers killed thousands of double-crested cormorants, ultimately driving them away from their East Sand Island colony in 2016. But the effort badly backfired.

A large group of birds took up residence on the Astoria-Megler Bridge.

The 10,000 cormorants that live on the bridge are a much smaller colony than the 30,000-member East Sand Island colony. But the thing is, individual cormorants are now likely to eat more salmon, because they have fewer varieties of fish to choose from at bridge as opposed to their previous location.

So now there’s a new plan. For $40 million, the Oregon Department of Transportation is considering relocating the cormorants back to where they came from: East Sand Island.

Further reading:

• “ODOT Report Proposes Moving Cormorants Back to Island From Which They Were Evicted” (Willamette Week)
• “Cormorant Colony on Columbia River Bridge Still Deffies Solutions, Feasts on Salmon” (Seattle Times via the Oregonian)