I am a wildlife biologist…

I am a wildlife biologist and Professor of Biology with more than four decades of experience, and much of my early career was spent working on colonial, fish-eating birds.
My assessment of this proposal is quite simply that it is maximally ill conceived.
It is based on little science, as the evidence that cormorants have a significant impact on fish species of commercial or recreational importance is slender at best. Overfishing by commercial and recreational fisheries has resulted in reduction of top-level predators such as walleye, and burgeoning forage fish populations. The cormorant increase appears to have lagged the decrease in predatory fish due to the effects of chemical contaminants, as research by the Canadian Wildlife Service has shown. It appears in recent years that after recovery from the pesticide-era, that cormorant numbers around the Great Lakes have stabilized.

While the science of the effect of predator removal on commercially important fish species is uncertain, what is not uncertain is the effect of the proposed hunt on species protected under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. Double-crested cormorants frequently nest in mixed-species colonies.

It is not possible to shoot cormorants on a colony without causing the abandonment / destruction of the nests of other protected species, such as terns, gulls, great blue herons, egrets and night herons. The non-target species will either abandon their nests, or have their nests destroyed by nest predators will disturbed away from nests. The architects of this proposal should be well aware that any disturbance of these species during the nesting season is a direct violation of the Migratory Birds Convention Act.

A direct, predictable consequence of this proposal will be that Ontario hunters will engage in widespread illegal activity in violation of federal law. As such, this proposal should not be implemented. If it does go ahead, the architects of the proposal are culpable of condoning widespread illegal activity.