When I see the word "cull"…

When I see the word "cull" used in wildlife management, it often indicates a last resort or poorly thought out knee jerk human reaction. Sometimes its used either in response to lobbying pressure from a special interest group or a situation that was left unmanaged for too long and the determination to kill one species of animal to potentially save other animal populations seems like the only thing to do. Example: killing wolves in BC to "save" an imperiled group of caribou. In that case, it may very well have been habitat degradation which created the situation in the first place. Culling seems lazy and misguided.

So now the scapegoat is the Double-crested Cormorant. My greatest concern in this proposal however is less about the obvious effects on the cormorant than the toll on many other species of birds who will get caught in the "crossfire" as collateral damage. accidental or intentional. To allow hundreds of carcasses to rot in situ is certainly going to degrade the quality of water bodies and wetlands. And promoting such large scale open season on this bird in areas frequented by humans who want to enjoy the outdoors for recreation is a potentially dangerous and disturbing mix of guns, binoculars, boats and swimmers... oh and carcasses.