Dear Premier Ford: Your…

Dear Premier Ford:

Your government's proposal to kill the double crested cormorants allows licensed persons to kill 50 birds per day or 14, 250 for the entire season multiplied by the number of so-called hunters.

The cormorants are benefiting other water birds (herons, egrets, pelicans) that live with the cormorants. Attacking the cormorants will also kill the other birds with them. Any that survive will leave the site. Cormorants are beneficial because they eat large numbers of invasive alewives and round gobies , and other non-commercial and non-forage species.

Mass killing the cormorants will damage the environment because they will be left to rot in huge numbers. This will interfere with the natural ecosystem and create a terrible stench. There is no way to kill cormorants humanely. Injured and crippled birds will die of their wounds or starvation including their nestlings. This proposal is inhumane, cruel, ill considered, an affront to any sportsman worthy of the name and beyond decency.

The Ontario govt is responding to an emotional and political lobby of special interest groups. Neither the Ontario govt. nor the special interest groups have provided any third party expert information to support this massive killing. Eradication of a species is misguided. and certainly can not be called wildlife management.

Instead of scapegoating the cormorants, direct attention to the issues that actually do affect fish populations such as over fishing, pollution, shoreline and habitat destruction, etc..

This proposal is repugnant in the extreme and will appeal only to those of less than civilized tendencies. Killing brutalizes the killer. Ask military servicemen who have been in combat. The licensed persons will have guns, and the frenzy of this massive killing will have psychological consequences. Furthermore, this proposal will bring public scorn on the Ford government and vilification of government officials in charge. History will not be kind to either Doug Ford, or to the Minister in charge.