If "concerns expressed by…

If "concerns expressed by some groups (commercial fishing industry, property owners)" is enough to establish an open shooting season on something people don't like, whether or not there is any refereed and valid scientific evidence that supports those desires, what on this formerly green earth is our government coming to?

I'm a hunter myself, and am wholly disgusted, appalled, disappointed, dismayed and ashamed that our 'government' or any government in Canada would even entertain this proposal, let alone spend taxpayer's money (*MY* MONEY!!!!) on writing and tabling it. *ETHICAL HUNTERS* harvest a renewable resource, and they only shoot to eat or protect livestock that is in imminent danger; they don’t cause needless suffering, kill for fun, or let their quarry spoil. That this even made it to the proposal stage reeks of there being too strong an influence from people who are trigger-happy gun owners who feel the cormorants are ugly and therefore worthy of nothing but death. Great Blue Herons also nest in colonies and cause damage to the trees they nest in – but I guess since conventional thought considers them pretty, they weren’t included in this proposal?

More appalling that someone is weakly trying to paint it as some kind of 'conservation' method to help fish, rather than the obvious open shooting season that it really is since they'd be leaving lead-riddled carcasses to spoil in water bodies so that other creatures can ingest the lead and continue the needless death cycle. Whoever thinks they’re helping fish with this needs to wake, up, grow up, and work on introducing more legislation to educate and enforce and prevent and control and prohibit things that science has repeatedly proven actually negatively impact our native fish populations and wildlife habitat:
- the pet/aquarium fish and horticultural/landscaping industries (results in non-native invasive fish/invertebrate/plant species being released into our waters and terrestrial habitat)
- the numerous industries and human actions that pollute our waters
- outdoor cats
- non-native mute swans damaging marsh restoration efforts
- litter/garbage/dumping
- people hunting with lead shot and people fishing who use lead weights and leave that and their fishing line behind to cause animals to suffer to death
- various nuclear power plants along lake shorelines that local wildlife rehabilitators have to rescue oil-covered birds from (happens each year)

There are so many reasons why this proposal to hunt cormorants should not go forward:

Firstly:

IT WOULD CAUSE NEEDLESS SUFFERING AND DEATH OF NESTLINGS – AND ONE OF THE MAIN TENETS OF ETHICAL HUNTING IS TO NOT CAUSE SUFFERING. Shooting Cormorants during the proposed ‘season’ (from March 15 to December 31) would have them being shot during their breeding and nesting season (April – July). This means they would have young in the nest that are completely dependent upon their parents. These young, whose parent birds would be shot, would die from exposure and/or starvation. Tell me, are any other "game" bird species hunted or shot during their nesting season, or while at breeding colonies or while tending to their nests? Since you’ll realize the answer is no, examine why that is the case – and realize that it’s because that would be an unethical, unsportsmanlike, unnecessary, and indefensible and irresponsible action that should never have been done in the first place.

Secondly:

IT IS PAINFULLY OBVIOUS IT WILL INEVITABLY RESULT IN SUFFERING AND DEATH TO OTHER PROTECTED BIRD SPECIES. Cormorants don’t always nest in single species colonies; check the science - in Ontario, they almost always nest with other colonial water birds (pelicans - that are threatened in Ontario - plus several other species of herons, egrets, terns, and gulls). These are species protected by federal migratory bird legislation, or provincial legislation. If the government or whatever private body who bothered to waste taxpayers money on tabling this junk proposal even bothered to consider the impacts of discharging shotguns at or near these nesting colonies, including shooting at flying birds and shooting adults on their nests (both in trees and on the ground), then they would have recognized the enormous disturbance it would be to all of these other species sharing the nesting colony with the cormorants. If this proposal goes forward, IT IS A CERTAINTY THAT THERE WILL BE MEMBERS OF THESE PROTECTED SPECIES THAT WILL BE ACCIDENTALLY SHOT AND KILLED, resulting in orphaning other nestlings, causing a needless suffering death from exposure or starvation. Or, it greatly increases the chance not-shot adults of non-cormorant species will abandon their nests because of the disturbance or associated incidental predation, again consequently causing their young to die a needless suffering death from exposure or starvation. ***Therefore, shooting cormorants at their nesting colonies would inevitably cause disturbance, injury or death to other nearby or interspersed nesting colonial water birds – in direct violation of the Migratory Birds Convention Act. This would put provincially licensed cormorant ‘hunters’ at risk of legal prosecution on violation of federal migratory bird statutes, and potentially give cause to people to hold the government who created the legislation also liable/at fault.

Thirdly:

ALLOWING PEOPLE TO FREELY SHOOT CORMORANTS IS NOT THE APPROPRIATE OR RESPONSIBLY EFFECTIVE METHOD FOR MANAGING ONTARIO’S CORMORANT POPULATION, NOR IS IT NECESSARY. Since cormorants are essentially inedible, the only rationale for a cormorant ‘hunt’ is to attempt to reduce their populations. There is at best mixed evidence on whether cormorants have a *significant* effect on sport fish populations – there is evidence that actually shows otherwise. Among them, refer to Somers, Lozer, Kjoss, and Quinn 2003, “The Invasive Round Goby (Neogobius melanostomus) in the Diet of Nestling Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) in Hamilton Harbour, Lake Ontario” by the Journal of Great Lakes Research, Volume 29, Issue 3, pgs 392-399 – they found that the two most abundant species in nestling’s stomachs were the non-native and invasive species alewife and round goby, and that “fish species of sport or commercial interest were detected in samples with extremely low frequency (< 0.1%)”. There is strong evidence that Ontario’s cormorant population has stabilized and has even declined in some areas of Ontario (Lakes Huron and Superior) due to regime shifts in their food supply. The proposal’s own details state that “Their numbers began to increase rapidly from the 1970s to the early 2000s, with the latest information indicating Great Lakes populations have since stabilized or declined slightly”. Therefore, it's unnecessary to shoot cormorants to stabilize or reduce their population. Population reduction can be achieved through less intrusive and more targeted methods than shooting, such as egg-oiling.

Fourthly:

IF MANAGEMENT OF CORMORANT COLONIES IS DEEMED NECESSARY TO RESTRICT COLONY EXPANSION AT SPECIFIC SITES AND LIMIT FURTHER DAMAGE TO TREES, SHOOTING IS NOT REQUIRED TO DO SO. Less intrusive/non-intrusive methods are already proven extremely effective and do not harm other protected species nesting in or adjacent to colonies, plus they do not require killing hatched birds – such as: human presence during nest site selection and post-breeding dispersal; egg oiling; removing ground nesting materials; and destroying nests prior to egg-laying. Egg oiling is a proven effective means to limit cormorant productivity and has already been successfully used on some ground-nesting cormorant colonies on the Great Lakes. Plus, it has the additional benefit of not leaving an area riddled with lead pellets that are proven to permanently pollute a site by inevitably repeatedly causing deaths by lead poisoning to non-targeted birds, including loons, swans, geese, and ducks.

Fifthly:

THERE IS NO WAY TO ENFORCE THE DAILY BAG LIMIT. Besides being comically ludicrous, the proposed daily bag limit of 50 birds with no possession limit is essentially unenforceable. In one week, a determined hunter could legally shoot 350 cormorants, but without the need to retrieve the carcasses, how does the shooter prove they stayed under the limit? Even if the requirement was changed to mandate that they retrieve the carcasses, consider those that may not be retrievable if they fall into the water or into thick vegetation - unretrieved birds jeopardize the shooter’s claim to have stayed within the daily limit, both morally/ethically, as well as if they are approached by a conservation officer requiring proof.

Sixthly:

THE NEGATIVE SOCIETAL IMPACTS FROM THIS PROPOSAL INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:
- loss of confidence in the Ontario government’s support for science-based environmental protection, ecosystem management and conservation principles
- anti-hunting sentiment - as a hunter myself, I already experience anti-hunting sentiment; this proposal would exacerbate conflict between hunters and non-hunters, and justifiably so!
- The mis-conception of this as a "hunting season", which it clearly is not. Categorizing cormorants as "game" under the FWCA does not mean this proposed activity is “hunting”. Hunting involves eating what is procured. I’m a hunter and it makes me not want to call myself one, if I’m to be associated with people who just shoot something inedible and leave it there to rot! Anyone who calls themselves a hunter and participates in that needs to redefine themselves as a bully with a gun, not a hunter.
- Human safety (e.g., shooting from boats, shooting with shotguns over open water, shooting near areas where recreation is occurring during the highest water-based recreation time in the calendar year). This invites open, repeated conflict with the non-hunting recreational public, which significantly outnumber the hunting recreational public. Apart from any other consideration, the danger to others, who also use the waterways, should be of foremost concern.
- Wasting public safety resources - This increased chance of conflict will cause more people to make phone calls to the police to report/complain about the gunshots than there are people who want to kill cormorants, and where shots are fired, the police have to respond; the police and conservation officers need to be able to spend their time elsewhere. This proposal would create conditions that will result in wasting police time.

Please, I urge the Ontario government to withdraw this proposal and toss it directly in the trash. IF A CORMORANT MANAGEMENT STRATEGY IS DEEMED NECESSARY IN CERTAIN AREAS, THEN IT SHOULD BE ONE THAT IS ETHICAL, DEFENSIBLY FOUNDED ON STRONG SCIENCE *RATHER THAN CONFIRMATION BIAS*, AND SHOULD NOT IMPACT PROTECTED SPECIES. WHAT AMOUNTS TO A FREE-FOR-ALL KILL-THEM-ALL-AS-THEY-SIT-ON-THEIR-NESTS IS NOT THE ANSWER.