Speak Out for Salmon and Cormorants!

Our wild salmon on the Columbia River are on the brink of extinction but rather than addressing the primary cause of their decline, the Columbia and Snake River Dams, Federal Agencies have instead been scapegoating wild birds. For nearly two decades, federal agencies have thumbed their noses at the federal courts and refused to develop a real plan to protect and recover federally listed salmon. Instead, they have gone out and shot thousands of Double-crested Cormorants as a way to distract the public from their ongoing failures.

We now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak up for wild birds and salmon! We need your voice! 

A federal court ruled earlier this year that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must develop a new plan to protect salmon on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. The Court found that the federal agencies have wasted billions of public dollars pursuing salmon protection strategies. The Court strongly advised the agencies that it was time to address the dams. This is the fifth time in twenty years that the courts have ruled against federal agencies on this issue. It is a disgraceful record of agencies flagrantly violating the law and even as they go through the process of rewriting the plan, federal agents continue to go out on the river and kill wild birds for doing what comes naturally…and they plan to keep killing wild birds for another two years.

It is time to stop the slaughter and fix the dams! Scientists say that the single most important thing we can do to recover salmon on the Columbia River System is to remove obsolete dams on the Lower Snake River. If we remove the Snake River Dams, improve flows over the Columbia River Dams and stop scapegoating wild birds, the salmon will return.