Caspian terns—the Steven Seagals of gulls—are currently ranked “the single most significant (per capita) avian predator” on juvenile steelhead migrating from the Snake River basin and the upper Columbia.
“Predation rate estimates based on PIT tag recoveries on Caspian tern colonies indicated that impacts were again highest on upper Columbia River steelhead smolts (14.9 percent depredated by Goose Island terns) and Snake River steelhead smolts (2.8 percent by Crescent Island terns),” according to preliminary data collected at the plateau islands.
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.