THE PERSECUTION OF CORMORANTS

Why Parks Canada and the OMNR should leave the Cormorant Colonies alone!

  • The return of cormorants, a native wildlife species, to the Great Lakes basin, including Middle Island and High Bluff Island, is part of a natural process.

  • Changes in the composition of vegetation in and around bird colonies, everywhere in the world, is a sign of a vibrant, evolving natural ecosystem.

  • The presence of cormorants benefits other colonial waterbirds, such as herons and egrets, both of which are stable or growing where cormorant are found.

  • There is no scientific evidence that reducing or eradicating cormorants will be beneficial. In fact, culling cormorants may force other bird species to vacate the colony sites they share.

  • Culls are not effective unless they are carried on indefinitely, for culls do not reduce the local area's desirability to cormorants, or its carrying capacity. Barring massive slaughter, the rate of cormorant population growth may actually accelerate in response to lethal control measures.

  • Cormorants are beneficial because the majority of their diet is often primarily invasive species such as alewives and round gobies, as well as other non-commercial species.

  • There is no way to cull cormorants humanely. Past culls in other regions have resulted in large numbers of injured and crippled birds being left to die of their wounds or starve to death, including nestlings.

  • Parks Canada and the OMNR should protect ecosystems, but they should not do so through the removal or slaughter of native wildlife species that they have arbitrarily decided are undesirable.

  • Parks Canada and the OMNR are under-funded. Instead of wasting funds on programs that interfere with natural processes, they should be directed to legitimate concerns in the park, such as enforcement of laws protecting rarer species.

  • The Parks Canada and ONMR claim that Double-crested cormorants are somehow unnatural, unwanted and that natural processes, evident in bird colonies throughout the world, need to be controlled is unscientific and irrational.

    • Why kill cormorants?

    Cormorants were nearly wiped out by human persecution and pesticide poisoning, but they are in the midst of a recovery. They have returned to the Great Lakes ecosystems they inhabited in past years and are doing well, although they are not nearly as abundant as they used to be. Because people are not used to seeing the numbers of cormorants and other birds that used to exist in the past, they erroneously conclude that "nature is out of balance." Of couse, nothing could be further from the truth.

    The Myths Perpetuated by Anglers

    Double-crested Cormorants are impressive, skillful aquatic predators that anglers have long viewed as competitors. The angling community claims cormorants are having an adverse effect on sport fish populations and that they kill the trees they nest in. But cormorants have little, if any, effect on sport fish populations and the death of a percentage of trees in their nesting colonies is part of a natural process of succession. But because they are fish eaters, the sport fishing industry has been quick to condemn them, just like hawks, owls, ospreys, loons, herons, egrets and other birds were in the past.

    Recently, the sport fishing industry has been pressuring the Ontario government and various US state governments to drastically reduce cormorant numbers. In Ontario, tens of thousands have already been killed during their most vulnerable time - nesting season.

    Scientific research has repeatedly proven that cormorants have no substantial negative ecological impact on fish populations. In fact, the majority of their diet is alewife and round goby, both introduced species that have disrupted Great Lake's ecosystems. Regardless, the Ontario government and other jurisdictions are continuing to kill cormorants - to pacify a small but aggressive special interest lobby.

    The Myths Perpetuated by Wildlife Managers

    Double-crested cormorants are being blamed for killing trees and other vegetation, so some wildlife managers want to see their numbers reduced. They want to maintain existing levels of vegetation, even though changes in vegetative cover occur in bird colonies the world over and is a natural process.

    While managers propose to kill cormorants, their plans seem to ignore the fact that if habitat is available and attactive to cormorants, then the vacancies created by killing birds will only be filled by new birds. They also seem to ignore the fact that cormorants are native birds that are repopulated areas they were extirpated from in the past. Their return is a good news environmental event. The only way that reducing numbers can work to maintain existing levels of vegetation is by an on-going process of killing birds and/or the widespread slaughter of cormorants throughout the Great Lakes basin.

    Slaughtering a native water bird species is unscientific, unethical and unnecessary. It is clearly not the best way to use the limited budgets of fish and wildlife departments or provincial and national parks.