It is my personal belief…

It is my personal belief that there are better ways of fixing the issues associated with cormorants than allowing hunters to shoot them down with few restrictions. By disrupting the population of cormorants, the Ministry of Environment may be causing subsequent changes that are unintended and potentially more harmful to the ecosystem than if they were left alone. Furthermore, unless cormorant poop is causing catastrophic damage to the soil and cormorant diets are causing catastrophic damage to the fish population, they should be left be in order to preserve the integrity of the ecosystem. This is especially true because populations are restoring to natural levels, as opposed to populations rising beyond what they are supposed to be. Finally, the noise of gunshots would most certainly disrupt other populations, including bird populations, thus leaving them vulnerable. In general, this policy change has the potential to be highly disruptive to the ecosystem and further discussion definitely needs to be facilitated (especially with environmental experts, as opposed to only considering the opinions of fishermen who have for-profit interests) before a decision is reached. Until then, I will not support this move.