美国计划4年内杀11000只鸟以拯救鲑鱼.doc

U.S. government plans to cull 11,000 Oregon birds to save salmon PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - The federal government has plans to kill nearly 11,000 double crested cormorants on a small Oregon island over four years in an effort to saveU.S. government plans to cull 11,000 Oregon birds to save salmon ? By?Shelby Sebens14 hours ago     By Shelby Sebens PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - The federal government has plans to kill nearly 11,000 double crested cormorants on a small Oregon island over four years in an effort to save embattled salmon, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said on Friday. The plan, in the form of a final Environmental Impact Statement, is under review. If it gets final approval, state agriculture workers could be shooting birds and oiling nests, a process used to keep chicks from hatching, by spring. The plan is preferred over another alternative that calls for the killing of 18,000 birds by 2018, U.S. Army Corps spokeswoman Diana Fredlund said. “This is a difficult situation,” she said. “We are trying to balance the salmon and steelhead vs. the birds. It’s very difficult to find the right answer and so it’s taken us a long time. We’ve had a lot of experts working on it.” The corps also looked at alternatives that included hazing the birds to get them off the island, but Fredlund said that would just shift the problem elsewhere. “We don’t want to just shoot them off the island and let them be somebody else’s problem. This is a regional problem,” she said. The corps’ action came after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a Biological Opinion last year, calling for a decrease of the bird population from about 13,000 breeding pairs now to just under 6,000 or fewer by 2018. Federal officials say the birds are eating the juvenile salmon and putting the fish population at risk.?Many juvenile salmon and steelhead are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. But the Audubon Society of Portland says the rea