This is an unconscionable…

This is an unconscionable proposal which will cause unimaginable cruelty and death to millions of birds.

With individuals able to kill 50 cormorants per day, a single individual could kill 14,250 birds for the entire hunting season! If only 100 small game licenses were issued, this would result in 1,425,000 birds killed in just one year!

Yet, the entire North American double-crested cormorant population is estimated to be less than the population of Toronto, with about 250,000 in the entire Great Lakes Basin and considerably less residing in Ontario.

Cormorants are a NATIVE species that are beneficial because their diet consists of very large numbers of primarily invasive fish, such as alewives and round gobies, as well as other non-commercial, non-forage species. It is the commercial fisheries in Lake Erie and other lakes that are depleting fish populations, not cormorants.

The mass killing being proposed by the Ontario government is a political response to anecdotes, unsubstantiated claims and complaints by a small group of radical fishermen, supported by special interest groups. There is no substantive body of scientific evidence supporting their position.

Instead of making cormorants a scapegoat for environmental problems they have nothing to do with, attention should be given to addressing the issues that actually do affect fish populations and aquatic environments, such as climate change, pollution, shoreline and habitat destruction, over-fishing and a broad range of other issues. People are the problem, not the birds.

The presence of cormorants benefits other colonial water birds, such as federally protected herons, egrets and pelicans, all of which are stable or growing populations where cormorants are found.

The mass killing of cormorants will not be beneficial. In fact, the process of killing them will force other bird species to vacate the colony sites they share.

There is no way to kill cormorants humanely. Even controlled, organized culls in other regions have resulted in large numbers of injured and crippled birds being left to die of their wounds or starve to death, including nestlings.

The proposed “hunt” will cause unimaginable cruelty by allowing the wholesale, uncontrolled slaughter of cormorants across the province, wounding adults (video of cormorant with a broken bill: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0pBs6XjtSg&list=PL1asTRKubtRuAy7LWUpMFubz97ydJ…) and orphaning thousands of baby birds who will die from starvation and exposure to the elements.

The proposed designation of cormorants as game animals, along with a non-utilization exemption that allows the carcasses to rot should be an affront to every hunter who believes in sportsmanship, fair chase and ethics.

There are very real safety issues where hunters are permitted to discharge firearms throughout the spring, summer and fall season when lakes and natural areas are populated by cottagers and tourists.

Cormorants are NOT overabundant in the Great Lakes. The mass killing of cormorants will damage the environment and disrupt natural ecosystem processes. The changes in composition of vegetation in and around these colonies show a healthy, dynamic process. The number of trees affected by these nesting birds is small and insignificant by comparison to the devastation of forests by the logging industry

Radical cormorant-haters have already attacked colonies under cover of night, destroying nests, stomping on chicks and killing adults. Once the proposed changes to the law come into effect, people will be given free rein to destroy as many cormorants as they want. It wouldn’t take many people very long to wipe out most cormorants in the province, leaving just a tiny remnant of their population in a few protected areas.

PREVENT THE CRUELTY AND KILLING NOW!