Eastern Washington Water Needs & Predatory Bird Threat to Northwest Salmon

The second Columbia River Basin Long Term Water Supply and Demand Forecast has been released by the Washington Department of Ecology’s Office of Columbia River. The forecast evaluates changes expected to occur in surface water supply and demand for eastern Washington over the next twenty years, and acts as a guide for developing new water supplies in that region. By utilizing computer modeling tools, factors such as climate change, regional and global economic conditions, and population growth were incorporated into the report’s forecast calculations. Based on population and industrial development growth expectations the current forecast predicts that over the next two decades water demand in eastern Washington will increase by nearly twenty-four percent. Also, the forecast outlook of warmer, wetter winters, and drier hotter summers in eastern Washington creating future water supply challenges calls for water managers to pay close attention to changes in temperature and precipitation.

Sea lions aren’t the only ones preying on Northwest Salmon. Predatory birds on the Columbia River have been consuming as much as fifteen percent of migrating endangered upper Columbia River steelhead smolts. As part of H.R. 5325, language authored by Congressman Doc Hastings, which directs federal agencies to protect Northwest salmon from predatory birds, passed the House of Representatives earlier this month. Hastings summarizes.

HASTINGS: What the language essentially does is direct the Corps of Engineers to use whatever means they have in order to make sure the birds don’t lay in wait.

That includes authorizing the Army Corps of Engineers to use lethal removal on these predatory birds.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.H