Comments regarding EBR…

Comments regarding EBR number 013-4124: Proposal to establish a hunting season for double-crested cormorants in Ontario.
We are biologists with a broad range of experience in conservation, ecology and ornithology, and we have significant concerns about the proposed hunting season on cormorants in Ontario.
This proposal, if enacted, would cause harm to Great Lakes ecosystems and would not have the effects hoped for by commercial fishing and property owner groups. We feel strongly that the changes proposed would have unpredictable repercussions to fisheries and lake ecology, cause avoidable suffering to nesting birds and nestlings of many species, set several bad precedents that may open the door to poorly planned, reactionary wildlife management practices in the future, and reflect badly on hunters and the Province of Ontario.
While cormorant numbers are at a historically high level in the Great Lakes, the main reasons for this increase are human-caused changes in the lake ecosystem, such as (i) the addition of nutrients to the water, making the lakes more biologically productive thereby making a cold-water fishery into a warm-water fishery, (ii) the introduction of several invasive, non-native fish species, and (iii) climate warming. Energy and nutrients now flow through the lake food web, supporting higher biomass of both prey species and top predators like cormorants. There are now more shallow, warm-water fish species like yellow perch, sunfish, bass and pike in Lake Ontario, and exploding numbers of introduced species like round goby, white perch and alewife. Cormorant populations have responded to this increased food availability and have not just suddenly become detrimental to the populations of native fishes.
Cormorants play an important role as top predator in lake ecosystems. As a result, they provide ecosystem services by limiting prey populations and helping balance the food web as it reacts to changing conditions and human-caused perturbances. Because of this, cormorants make the lake ecosystem more stable and robust. Cormorants also help to keep the populations of invasive fish species in check. A 2016 study on Lake Michigan (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0380133015002750), for example, found that “Invasive species, most notably alewife, round goby, and white perch, contributed over 80% and 90% of the diet of cormorants by biomass and number, respectively.” That study concluded that its “results do not support the active management of the cormorants … to protect or recover local fisheries.”
The significant reductions in cormorant populations that the proposed hunting season would cause would clearly result in an increase in populations of invasive species, which would in turn have detrimental effects on fisheries and biodiversity in the Great Lakes. Such changes will reduce the capacity of the lake ecosystem to buffer the effects of future invasive species introductions. Cormorant populations are ecologically important and should not be hunted in order to reduce their numbers.
The proposed changes that would allow for a high bag limit, the spoilage of meat, hunting from a stationary motorboat, and hunting during the bird breeding season are problematic on many fronts. These factors will enable hunters to approach island breeding colonies closely with the potential to kill hundreds of cormorants at a time from just one boat. This would cause panic, trampling, and abandonment of nests containing young birds. Such disturbance at cormorant colonies would make it impossible to keep track of bag limits. After the shooting, hunters would then have to go ashore, collect and properly dispose of carcases, causing even greater disturbance to breeding birds.
Most cormorant breeding colonies contain other non-target bird species, including protected and declining species such as the common tern, which would also lose nests in the chaos. Nestlings of all species would die of exposure and starvation. This suffering would be seen publicly and internationally as extreme cruelty and probably violates laws protecting animals. Additionally, many colonies are on protected islands such as the Limestone Islands in Georgian Bay (Killbear Provincial Park), nature reserves such as Snake and Salmon Islands in Lake Ontario, and on privately owned islands. It would be very difficult and expensive to regulate and enforce any hunt that would spill over to such lands. Summer hunting also has great potential to cause disturbance to cottagers, local residences and safety issues with recreational boating.
Many people view sport hunting as a legitimate activity that provides food and gets people out into the natural environment. The proposed changes would almost certainly darken this image, undermining the practice and image of hunting as disciplined, government-regulated and conservation-minded. This proposal harkens back to the disgraceful days of unregulated market and plume hunting and evokes the human-caused extinctions of the Great Auk, Passenger Pigeon and Carolina Parakeet.
Finally, these unprecedented changes would make it to too easy for similarly ill-conceived, reactionary management efforts to be levelled against other native species that are sometimes seen as competing with people for resources or considered unaesthetic. These changes would result in behaviour and levels of killing and cruelty that will be documented by the media and seen by the public as a massive wildlife cull. No sensible government ministry should proceed with this proposal, given these risks.
Dr. Fran Bonier
Dr Paul Martin
Dr. Robert Montgomerie
Dr. Vicki Friesen
Dr. Paul Grogan
Mr. Chris Grooms
Dr. Steven Lougheed
Dr. Laurene Ratcliffe
Dr. John Smol
Department of Biology
Queen's University
Kingston ON K7L 3N6