Move To Save Salmon & Avian Influenza Update

Move To Save Salmon & Avian Influenza Update

Move To Save Salmon & Avian Influenza Update. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

A move to help save salmon near Astoria by killing cormorants is very reminiscent of a plan near the Bonneville dam to kill sea lions. The Army Corps of Engineers plan to use shotguns, rifles, nets and oil poured onto eggs to keep them from hatching in an effort to kill as many as 11-thousand Double Crested Cormorants. The birds feast on some 11-million small salmon each year according to estimates. A boom in the cormorant population in the last year is prompting the action since the Corps is charged with protecting the endangered salmon.

State officials in Wyoming have now received confirmation of highly pathogenic avian influenza in a single Canada Goose near Cheyenne. It’s a reminder that while the incidents in Washington and Oregon while in the past are not completely gone. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack said there have been about 60 incidents, mostly in the western U.S.

VILSACK: The critical challenge here is to make sure that we contain the circumstances when they are discovered through biosecurity measures and we’re trying to work with producers and producer groups to get the word out. We’re also working with our trading partners to make sure that they limit the bans on exports to the regions that have been actually impacted and infected by this.

He says that 12 to 14% of exports have been affected by the outbreak.

That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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