After reading your proposal,…

After reading your proposal, I am left with many questions. It does not sound like you really know what the consequences will be for the population of Double-crested Cormorants in the long-term if you allow them to be hunted, do you? Nor have you really demonstrated actual impacts that these birds may or may not have on fish populations. Remember how the Harp Seal was blamed for declining fish populations but then the real fault was found to be over-fishing by humans? Are competitive fishermens' complaints actually being taken as proof here? If as you say, you haven't a clue about how many hunters will be killing Double-crested Cormorants or where, then how can you possibly state with any certainty that the effect of your proposed hunt will be "neutral" ecologically -- it's impossible to predict that because there are many hunters in Ontario. Everything is ecologically related and this population of birds was low once before already, so you need to consider this idea more carefully before opening hunting on a species so freely -- "50 bagged birds," "no possession limit," and from "April to December." This sounds excessive and likely to cause an impact on the population eventually "depending on the number of hunters." Your proposal sounds like you are catering to a group of people who just don't like Double-crested Cormorants really. Your comment about "aesthetics" is a statement about what is completely wrong with society today, and I find it shocking that you'd even consider it. It worries me that you would find 'looks' so important that wildlife must be killed to protect that -- it's sheer nonsense and should not be part of any intelligent conservation plan. Do we cull people that we think are ugly or create a mess on their property? It is tantamount to the same thing really -- arguments based on aesthetics cannot be considered when the job is to protect our natural world for the betterment of human life. Anyone familiar with them knows that these birds can damage a small number of trees but that is natural and certainly should not be used to justify your proposal. Humans do the most extensive damage to trees and all environments in general, so are we going to hunt foresters and developers too? Of course not. Many wildlife species on this planet are ugly or do ugly things in order to survive but 'ugly' is not the same thing as 'bad' or 'harmful.' The success of human survival depends on protecting species diversity and this proposal sounds like it could cause harm to populations of colonial waterbirds in Ontario in the long-term. Birds such as American White Pelicans (which is a species at risk), Black-crowned Night-herons, Caspian Terns, Common Terns, Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, Herring Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls are often blended with Double-crested Cormorant nesting colonies. If hunting is allowed in or close to those colonies, it would have the potential to disrupt the breeding season of many birds. How is the wildlife that humans depend on supposed to sustain itself if we allow hunting during any breeding season? And the cruelty caused to young orphaned birds by this type of hunt is not ethical as well. So, no hunting should be allowed near any active bird colony including one of only cormorants, and hunting should never be allowed during breeding seasons. In the recent past, we already had to work to bring colonial waterbirds back to respectable numbers, so please don't allow such a needless practice as sport hunting to reverse that hard-won achievement. Humans always underestimate the long-term damage we can do to other species through seemingly legitimate short-term actions. Please reconsider this unhealthy sounding proposal. A hunter couldn't have written it better and that is a skewed and risky viewpoint. Also, with climate change effects now at a tipping point in human history, we NEED to protect our diversity fiercely and not waste our precious resources on unnecessary human WANTS. Sport hunting is a waste of potential food sources, and you even stated that hunters should be allowed to let cormorants "spoil" in their possession -- shame on you for that! No wildlife should be killed and left to spoil in the name of 'fun' because wildlife has immense value to humans and you should be protecting it for future need. Furthermore, my family has been threatened in the past on our home property by raccoon hunters whose bullets could have injured us from a nearby field. I have also been in great fear of gunfire at the shore of Niagara-on-the-Lake in winter, where Americans can legally hunt ducks on the Niagara River. In my experience, Double-crested Cormorants are very often found near human habitation or where humans go for recreational purposes, even their colonies in parks and such. So this adds another unnecessary risk to humans from your proposal. It only makes sense that hunting should never be allowed where humans live or play close by (knowing that a bullet from a rifle can travel up to a mile in some cases). So, hunting is already allowed too close to where human activity takes place in Ontario -- Presqu'ile Provincial Park duck hunting is another example I can remember feeling uncomfortable with. So, please reconsider this disturbing proposal for all of the above reasons. Thank you.