Double Crested Cormorant –…

Double Crested Cormorant – Water’s Success Story
The Double Crested Cormorant species has done nothing wrong but live. 40 years ago Double Crested Cormorants could not breed successfully in the Lower Great Lakes Basin because our waters were too polluted with PCB’s and DDT. Today this bird species is our success story of cleaner waters. Today this bird is being threatened with an unwarranted slaughter that will also seriously imperil other colonial nesting water birds in Ontario.
When I was a youth, I remember seeing pictures in the national media showing young Double Crested Cormorants with crossed bills. These young birds were from cormorant nests on the Lower Great Lakes. This birth defect was the result of contamination of PCB’s in the adult birds. The PCB’s were bioaccumulated in the adults as a result of eating contaminated fish. Some eggs never hatched because the egg shell was too thin because of DDT contamination. Their food, small fish, had acquired the pollutants that were found in high levels in our waters. As a result, many cormorants could not reproduce successfully in the Lower Great Lakes Basin.
Similar disturbing stories were happening with so many other important predatory bird species. Bald Eagles, Peregrine Falcons and Ospreys along with others all saw precipitous declines in their populations because of DDT contamination.
The cormorants and the other declining bird species were the “Canary in the coal mine” and did society a great favour by warning us of the dangers ahead. They were the early indicators that something terrible was happening to the environment with the introduction of long lasting pesticides and industrial pollutants like PCB’s and DDT.
In 1962 Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, a book forecasting the demise of species because of pesticides and industrial pollutants being released into the environment. Society has worked hard to correct our ways since then.
Fortunately today, especially in Hamilton, we are witnessing a comeback of many species that were on the brink of extirpation in our part of North America. Today there is one Bald Eagle nest in Cootes Paradise. There were 28 Bald Eagles overwintering in Hamilton Harbour last winter. There are three active Peregrine Falcon nests in Hamilton with the best known on the Sheraton Hotel. There are about 10 Osprey nests in the Hamilton area now. With this comeback we are seeing several hundred Double Crested Cormorants nesting in the Hamilton area.
Why, because the water quality of the Lower Greats Lakes has been tremendously improved by the elimination or significant reduction of DDT, PCB’s and other pollutants in our waters.
The numbers of cormorants that we are seeing today is quite simply our success story.
Legalizing a slaughter of Double Crested Cormorants in Ontario, as being proposed by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, is not a way to celebrate.
The idea of shooting cormorants at their breeding colonies during the breeding season is absurd. I support hunting but I do not support an unnecessary slaughter. Double Crested Cormorants share their breeding colonies with many other colonial nesting birds like Common Terns, Caspian Terns, Black Crowned Herons and Great Egrets. Allowing shooting in the breeding colonies during the breeding season will have a horrendous disruptive effect on the other species let alone on the cormorants.
If Ontario wishes, for whatever reason, to open a hunting season on cormorants then let it fall within the dates of the fall Waterfowl season. The new regulation would allow for 50 birds per day to be shot from March 15 to December 15. With no requirement to gather the birds there is absolutely no way of determining how many cormorants have actually been shot. Yes, many will die but the injured ones will languish and die slowly as nature takes it course.
The proposed regulation for the cormorant hunt would allow the hunters to allow the meat of the cormorants to spoil. No other game bird’s meat is allowed to spoil.
As to animal cruelty, the proposed hunt is a recipe. I cannot imagine the number of young cormorants in nests that will be left alone to die of starvation and dehydration by the absence of shot adults and also the young of other bird species that nest in the colonies with parents that are forced to abandon their nests because of the shooting.
Yes, cormorants are in greater numbers than before. This is to be celebrated, as the “Canary in the coal mine” is telling us we have better water quality. There is no concrete evidence that cormorants are causing a decline in fish populations. They feed mostly on non-native fish like Alewives and Round Gobies. Yes, they also can feed on small game fish but so do we.
If anglers are really concerned about game fish success I suggest they steer their efforts to ongoing sedimentation flowing into our waterways, combined storm / sewage outflows, the high nutrient levels flowing out of sewage treatment plants and the fish gender changing pharmaceuticals in them. The danger we face today are conditions that promote massive Blue Green Algae blooms not a bird.
Yes, a small number of trees are killed and some fish are eaten by cormorants. Don’t we all need our space. We’ve all got to live.
In Florida, where so many Canadians travel to in the winter, breeding bird colonies of mostly white and pink birds are a tourist attraction and seeing Mangroves covered in white wash is an indication of a healthy bird colony and environment. Should we go back to shooting wading birds like egrets in Cyprus Swamps for their feathers to adorn our hats?
In 1919, a few days from 100 years ago, the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club got its start as the Hamilton Bird Protectionist Society. As a result, in 1927, Cootes Paradise was set aside as a wildlife sanctuary, providing a foothold for the Royal Botanical Gardens. 100 years later we do not want to see a retrograde step into the thinking of over 100 years ago with market hunting, bounties and slaughters of Buffalo and Passenger Pigeons and strychnine poisoning of predators.