As a property owner with…

As a property owner with frontage on Presqu'ile Bay in southern Ontario, I fully support a reduction in the cormorant population, as the vast flocks that sweep back and forth across our small bay have in my observation had a significant impact in reducing fish populations in the bay.
However, allowing the shooting of birds in large numbers will have more negative outcomes that outweigh the benefits of the reduction.
The quiet enjoyment of property, and recreational use of the Bay will be hindered by 9 months of potential hunting activity, and in fact may pose dangers to recreational users during peak vacation periods.
A 50-bag limit for these large birds seems designed to make enforcement of limits and disposal so onerous as to encourage only cursory oversight.
I fear the Bay will be polluted with rotting corpses, which will wash up on my shoreline, posing disposal hardship and health risks if not promptly removed.
Further, encouraging "target practice" with these lax rules will only serve to scatter the dense flocks, driving nesting activity and the environmental destruction that these birds create over a much wider geographic area.
I believe a more appropriate approach to control and reduction of the flocks, without endangering human populations or disrupting quiet enjoyment of property, would be to engage in widespread remedial actions at the nesting grounds to interrupt the breeding cycle without driving the birds to other locations or to increase breeding frequency. Administering oil to the eggs to prevent hatching would fool the birds into continuing to roost until egg failure was apparent, perhaps therefore using up the typical hatching season. Several years of this controlled activity would result in reduced populations and a re-balancing of bird and fish populations in affected areas.
Allowing essentially unchecked shooting will have far-reaching negative effects that will outweigh the seemingly simple answer it presents.