The Double-crested Cormorant…

The Double-crested Cormorant is a beautiful and tenacious native seabird of Ontario and of North America in general (Figure 4). They have survived centuries of hunting, persecution, and poisoning by humans. Now that their population may finally be returning to something resembling what it was before the advent of European settlement (Wires & Cuthbert 2006), it seems the epitome of foolishness to introduce a change in policy that would allow the conservation gains of the past 50+ years to be obliterated in a matter of a year or two. Double-crested Cormorants have a fundamental right to exist and feed on their native lands. The fact that such a simple consequence of reality may inconvenience the occasional angler should not be of the slightest concern to the Government of Ontario, nor to any government.