At a time when we are losing…

At a time when we are losing birds and other species of animal at an unprecedented rate, the introduction of yet new hunting seasons and relaxed hunting laws shows an appalling lack of consideration, care and understanding for life and nature.

Nowhere in North America are sport hunters currently permitted to shoot nesting birds and their chicks at close range, but that is exactly what is now – unbelievably – being proposed for Double-crested Cormorants. The bill also proposes to change the law in Ontario, to allow sport hunters to ‘spoil’ the birds after being shot, meaning left to rot. Currently it is illegal to ‘spoil’ game species, since technically the hunting of wildlife isn’t supposed to be for the sheer thrill of killing. Carcasses, in theory, are to be used.

The current proposal – unprecedented in its cruelty and sheer blood thirst – would allow hunters to shoot up colonies at their pleasure in an open season that will run from March 15 to December 31(!) – every year.

The intention is clearly to kill off these birds in Ontario and this goal can be accomplished quickly with no restrictions on the number of hunters that can attack a colony anywhere, anytime, including one of the largest colonies on the Great Lakes located in Toronto at Tommy Thompson Park. As long as sport hunters remain in their boats, and do not step onto the shore, there is nothing restricting them from coming close enough to shoot nests from below, killing adults peacefully tending their young.

Landowners have always had the unrestricted ability to kill cormorants if they were perceived as ‘nuisance’ on their private property. The main 'nuisance' that cormorants pose has however on examination been found to consist in their being in competition with sport fishers, who put their own personal enjoyment and hobby above the survival of other species and a healthy and normal eco system.

Almost all Double-crested Cormorant colonies contain several other colonial waterbird species such as Herring Gull, Ring-billed Gull, Common Tern, Caspian Tern, Black-crowned Night Herons, Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, White Pelicans, who will also be disturbed during their breeding season by this hunting activity. When Ontario Parks began culling cormorants at Presqu’ile Provincial Park, they lost the ONLY Great Blue Heron breeding colony on Lake Ontario which was embedded among the cormorants for protection against predators.

Please stop this disastrous proposal before waterbird colonies are decimated across Ontario.

Please note: It is impossible to monitor this hunting activity as proposed. The same promise to monitor the Spring Bear Hunt never materialized.