I am commenting on behalf of…

I am commenting on behalf of a 3,000+ member not-for-profit organization called We Care About Animals. We collectively find this proposal to allow the hunting of large numbers of cormorants odious. Not only will it condone the wanton and unnecessary killing of vast numbers of cormorants (50 birds/day per hunter which is a ridiculously high number!), but the birds apparently will not even need to be consumed!

We also find any form of violent killing of innocent beings without consumption to be a particularly offensive and utterly cruel waste of life generally undertaken for nothing but sport or malice. Such behavior must thus neither be encouraged nor tolerated among humans as it starts our species down a tragically slippery slope into obviously unethical behavior when it comes to our fellow creatures.

Furthermore, no human ever needs to consume animal flesh if sufficient plant foods are available, so there exists no valid necessity argument for this excessively lenient hunt, and the flimsy reasons cited are both questionable and have other, kinder solutions. Neither is there any valid case to allow the utter travesty of killing off our precious remaining wildlife without consumption.

Instead of permitting deviant humans to act out their violent impulses by cruelly killing these poor birds, we instead propose taking steps to encourage population growth among the cormorants' natural non-human predators and to protect such predators to the fullest extent of the law from all forms of killing. Allowing nature to manage its own populations typically makes much more sense than allowing humans to attempt to do that for mere perverse entertainment purposes.