AR-News: (CA) Province trains its guns on cormorants

[Barry Kent MacKay]

Mar. 20, 2004. 01:00 AM
Province trains its guns on cormorants
About 6,000 of the birds targeted Critics say the cull is unnecessary

KATE HARRIES
ONTARIO REPORTER

Thousands of cormorants are to pay the price for recent Ontario 
government decisions on hunting bears and wolves, environmentalists charge.

The province is currently soliciting public comment on its plan to shoot 
some 6,000 of the birds to protect vegetation on two islands at 
Presqu'ile Provincial Park near Brighton, east of Toronto.

Barry Kent MacKay of the Animal Protection Institute views the plan as a 
cynical political ploy by Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay to 
pacify a hunter and angler lobby upset by a continued ban on the spring 
bear hunt and a permanent ban on hunting wolves from Algonquin Park.

"He's throwing them a bone because he thinks the public won't care about 
these birds, because the public has really been poisoned against these 
birds," MacKay says.

Ramsay did not return a call for comment.

The move has pleased the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters.

"The science justifies it," spokesperson Greg Ferrent says. "They 
threaten the viability of fisheries resources (and) their excrement 
destroys everything in the immediate proximity. It destroys all vegetation."

There's controversy over whether declines in fish stocks can be blamed 
on the cormorant. An Environment Canada fact sheet says that "studies 
have repeatedly shown that in a natural environment, cormorants feed 
primarily on small, largely non-commercial, shallow-water fish" like 
alewife and rainbow smelt.

As for another concern - that the cormorant consumes the pan fish that's 
prey for major sport fish like trout and salmon - Environment Canada 
says "cormorants consume only about 0.5 per cent of the prey fish, which 
is insignificant when compared to about 13 per cent taken by sport fish."

But that's not the issue at Presqu'ile, says Bruce Pollard, senior avian 
biologist at the ministry's fish and wildlife branch. The problem, he 
says, is that cormorants have denuded Gull Island and threaten to 
eliminate the vegetation on High Bluff Island.

Last year, ministry staff used fire pumps and long poles to destroy 
nests, and agricultural sprayers to oil eggs, eliminating 62 per cent of 
the islands' 12,000 nests. Still, the population increased, which is why 
shooting is considered necessary this year.

"The purpose is to preserve the vegetation and the variety of birds 
nesting on those islands," Pollard says.

The double-crested cormorant wasn't a problem 30 years ago. It was 
almost extinct on the Great Lakes, wiped out by toxic chemicals and 
reduced to 10 nesting pairs in 1973.

Controls on DDT and PCBs have allowed the bird to rebound to a number 
that's now estimated at 350,000.

They're here from April to August, descending by the thousands on 
islands like those in Lake Ontario off Presqu'ile, which only had one 
cormorant's nest in 1982.

Great blue herons, black-crowned night herons and the recently arrived 
great egrets also nest on the islands along with large numbers of 
ring-billed gulls and Caspian terns.

Some local naturalists believe that the relationships between the 
different species will evolve, leading to changes in the species 
composition of the colony, and the best thing to do is wait and see what 
happens.

In the same way, the changes in soil chemistry from the high 
concentrations of birds may result in significant changes in vegetation 
on the islands, an article by a local bird committee suggested a few 
years ago.

"All these birds did was emerge from the brink of extinction," says 
AnnaMaria Valastro of the Peaceful Parks Coalition. "Are we going to 
start clubbing them to death once they start reoccupying their natural 
ecological niche?"

But the ministry argues that it must act now to protect representative 
woodland flora and fauna.

"I'm sure that the people who go to Presqu'ile would prefer to see a 
treed island that has existed there historically," Pollard says, adding 
that while some gulls will appreciate the landscape created by the 
cormorants, herons and egrets will not.

MacKay points out that heron and egret numbers expanded during the 
cormorant increase. And he says that the tall trees the ministry wants 
to save are past maturity.

"They eventually will die and topple whether there are cormorants or 
not," says MacKay, who disagrees with the ministry's view that the heron 
population will expand to fill the space left by the missing cormorants.

"In fact, more cormorants are likely to fill those spaces," he says.

Not so, says Pollard. "If you shoot a cormorant, it's not going to lay 
any more eggs."


____________________________

  Barry Kent MacKay 
  Canadian Office
  Animal Protection Institute 
  www.api4animals.org