Elleda Wilson: A complicated relationship

Sep. 15—For its lead story, the Audubon magazine, Summer 2022 edition, featured "Consider the cormorant," with photos by conservation photographer and Astorian Morgan Heim.

The story is about the cormorants who have taken over the Astoria Bridge, and the conflicts between the birds and both the bridge workers, who find them troublesome to work around, and the commercial and recreational fishermen, who resent the cormorants devouring juvenile salmon and steelhead.

Since 2017, Heim has been interested in the cormorants, and seeks to "document the birds' complicated relationship with humans, and capture their beauty and intelligence."

"I want people to be challenged," Heim said. "How can we wonder at them and have empathy for them, even if they can be inconvenient?" Well, one way is certainly through her photos of Melissa Colvin and Cormie at the Wildlife Center of the North Coast. The cormorant was too injured for release, and has become a permanent resident at the center.

"Everything about her is amazing," Colvin, the center's bird curator, said. She has formed a bond with Cormie, who is an intelligent, charming representative of her species. "When I look out at those birds on the bridge," Colvin says, "I see her."

So, are cormorants really a fishery problem? Not according to what Dom Lyons, director of conservation science for Audubon's Seabird Institute has said: "It's easy to develop the perception that cormorants are having some impact on a fish species we are interested in. It's actually rarely substantiated that that impact is significant." (Photos: Morgan Heim)