So now they want to kill some birds to save the salmon

The realities are that the birds, seals, squawfish, stripers, etc. are all on the list of stressors to the salmonid population. The sooner they get to putting these sorts of restrictions in place, the sooner we know the extent of the impact of them, the sooner we can shift focus back to water diversions and dams.

-Allen

Agreed, delist them,  but obviously these are the slim pickings issues that are significantly easier to attack rather than addressing the elephant in the room better known as water diversion.

well maybe so, but I don't see them tearing down bonneville or any of the other dams anytime soon.  So what do you do?  Keep letting the black death take 5% of all salmon and 10% of all steelie smolts?

If modern ecological theory has taught us anything, its that in our attempt to right one wrong, we tend to fail miserably at forecasting the entire set of implications related to that action. I think we all can concede that the current state of west coast salmonids is directly related to anthropogenic factors - habitat degradation, over harvest, water diversion, introduction of predatory exotics. Given how we arrived at the problem today, it seems that more alteration of the environment (population control of a stressor species) is asking for more trouble. You force a decline in one bird species, but what are the other unforseen consequences ? Does another predatory bird simply fill in that niche anyways ? Do the other fish species that cormorants prey upon experience a population increase as well ? Do the other now more plentiful fish species end up preying on smolts anyways ? Slippery slope for sure.

That being said, I definitely understand what you're saying and where you're coming from - if we can't fix the big problems, then its even more imperative that we get the lesser, easier to control stressors in check. As Allen pointed put as well, the faster that these stressors get remedied and we can quantify that stressor's role in the problem, we are then forced to address the big problems as they're the only ones that remain uncontrolled.

Perhaps they can use black flies to control cormorants?

http://www.designntrend.com/articles/15446/20140616/biting-flies-forcing-loons-to-leave-nests-in-record-numbers.htm

It is not the cormorants. It is not the striped bass. It is the dams and poor water resource management. Period.

All the other factors are just SYMPTOMS of this greater water management problem.

We can not "fix" any of these situations in our lifetime.
Man has made these problems over time,,,,,,but nature will fix it all in the end!

as in ONE BIG FLUSH!