What the Hell?! The idea…

What the Hell?! The idea that when a species is slightly coming back from the verge of extinction it is now time to start killing it again for sport is a sickness in humans. There is no conceivable reason for the Ontario government to allow this creature to be hunted. The proposed hunting season is March 15 to December 31 – virtually all year. As cormorants fly south for the winter, this is the entire part of the year they spend in Ontario.

This includes nesting season, against the established wisdom of sustainable conservation management.
It includes nesting season for other birds – like gulls and herons – that often nest with cormorants.
It includes anytime you are out birding during migration – spring and fall.
It includes the entire summer, when you might be relaxing by a lake, or out canoeing or boating.
For that entire time, people would be legally allowed to blast away at cormorants.

The proposed bag limit is 50 birds a day. The proposed hunting season is 292 days long. This means a single person would be able to kill 14,600 cormorants in a year. The high estimate for the North American population is 2,000,000 – which means at this rate, 138 people could eradicate the species from the continent in a single year.
This proposal is ridiculous and horrendous. Please do not move forward to allow this hunt.