Despite recent news that the population of Double-crested Cormorants on Lake Champlain had stabilized, and the fact that they seemed to be largely feeding on an invasive fish, not native fish that fishermen seek, and a total lack of evidence that Double-crested Cormorants are having a negative impact on commercial fish stocks in Lake Champlain, state wildlife agencies in New York and Vermont, in conjunction with the federal government, will work to reduce the cormorant population in Lake Champlain. Not only that, but Ring-billed Gulls are already being shot and having their nests oiled because “they are considered a human nuisance when they flock to picnic areas and outdoor restaurants in the summer.”
It is certainly possible that the success of one type of bird can have detrimental effects on other species but it seems suspect that it is cormorants, which are hated by fishermen, and gulls, which don’t seem to be doing harm to any other species, but are considered a nuisance when people get them used to people food, that are targeted.
Yeah, we run into that same problem in Pennsylvania. The Game Commission was threatening to wipe out an entire colony nesting on the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg because apparently their acidic crap was burning holes in egrets and herons nesting on the same island. Of course it didn’t matter that this was a colony of cormorants reestablishing itself on historical breeding grounds, and I believe the only place in PA that they were breeding at that time.
Die Endlösung was enacted for Geese and people whine about an Egret heronry. They have been euthanizing Cowbirds in San Diego County for the sake of Least Bell’s Vireo. There are many examples of this, unfortunately. I think that the extreme “ecological engineering” is dangerous, because everyone suffers from some degree of myopia.
So, Ring-billed Gulls are OK to target, but not Canada geese, which are an even bigger nuisance in many places?
Ironically, I just last week read this haiku by Japanese poet Basho:
Exciting at first,
then sad,
watching the cormorant-fishing.*
(*Apparently referring to a crowd-drawing but horribly cruel-sounding practice of training cormorants on a leash to fish, but preventing them from eating the catch by means of a ring fastened to their throats.)
Cormorants are not just eating invasive fish, they are eating anything they can catch. A cormorant was recently caught and found to have eighteen, yes eighteen, yellow perch in its digestive tract. They will each six to eight inch salmon and lake trout that have been placed in the lake. I think it is a shame that we are running our hatcheries to feed cormorants.
I and many of my fellow fishermen are very happy to see that the cormorant population is going to be reduced to 3000, from the current population of 12,000 to 14,000. I hope they can do the reduction quickly. I have not seen how they are going to do the reduction but I am will to say that there are several fisherman who would be willing help reduce the popuation quickly.
It is my understanding that a cormorant eats up to three pounds of fish per day. If there are 12,000 eating each day, that is 18 tons of fish that they will eat in one day. They have got to go.
Listen all you landlubbers: Why dont you go out to the Four Brothers Islands and try to hug a tree? Then youll see what your government policy concerning these birds has done to the enviroment. Oh forgive me, I must have been remiss. I forgot none of you live here.