Comment
In the past I would encourage people to volunteer as I did to help the MNR and take time away from work and become active in stocking trout as it improved Ontario's fisheries and tourism and attracted young people to environmental consciousness.
I have continued to volunteer but noticed in recent years that volunteers have decreased as we have begun to see ourselves as cormorant feeders. My efforts ( and the MNR 's ) no longer make the angling better but instead provide a meal plan for an unnaturally high population cormorants who would descend on even the small rivers immediately after stocking .
In Ontario I now see more cormorants on a fishing trip than fish so I now spend to travel outside Ontario for annual fishing trips to US states where cormorants are not allowed to overwhelm fisheries .
Spotting a cormorant was once an interesting oddity associated with being on one of the Great Lakes because herons , kingfishers, loons and osprey far outnumbered them . The reverse is now the case as these freshwater birds can't compete with saltwater cormorants and their ocean sized appetites. Now cormorants dominate from the Great Lakes to the Kawarthas to the smallest river.
A balance must be restored. As a naturalist I wholeheartedly support a game bird designation and 50 / day limit on the cormorant in Ontario.
Submitted December 1, 2018 11:13 PM
Comment on
Proposal to establish a hunting season for double-crested cormorants in Ontario
ERO number
013-4124
Comment ID
13473
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