# Cormorants



## Old Hunter (Jan 21, 2002)

Will there be a season this year for shooting the perch eating Cormorants. I heard it was in a paper up North that there would be a season. Hopefully this is true. Boehr please help.  :help: :help:


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## slayer (Jun 1, 2002)

AMEN!!!!!!!! THERE WORTHLESS JUST LIKE THE SEAGULLS :rant:


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## kingfisher 11 (Jan 26, 2000)

I read on another site they are even having big problems with them in N. Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

They hate them there. many have said they use the 3 S's on them. Some say they don't use the second S because the ***** got to eat to.


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## Northbay (Jun 25, 2002)

Saw this in Soo Evening News Sault Ste Marie. 
05/26/04 
Wildlife service targets double-crested cormorants

By SCOTT BRAND/The Evening News
EASTERN UPPER PENINSULA -- "We will get under way very soon here." said State Director Pete Butchko of the USDA's Wildlife Services Division as his agency prepares to launch a pilot program targeting the double-crested cormorant in the Les Cheneaux Islands. "Right now it is day to day, waiting for the weather."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be focusing efforts on five specific colonies that have become the nesting grounds for upwards of 25,000 cormorants. Green Island, St. Martin's Shoal, Goose Island, Crow Island and Saddlebag Island will all be visited in the coming weeks and months under the lethal population control program.

"It looks like they are arriving now, but they haven't built up to full numbers expected," said Butchko of the nesting birds. Once the majority of the birds have established their nests, members of the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and an eager band of volunteers will venture out onto these isolated islands with corn oil hoping to treat the eggs before hatching can take place.

The corn oil -- according to those who have engaged in these sorts of activities -- does not destroy the egg, but eliminates the flow of oxygen, effectively suffocating the bird embryos. If the eggs were broken, the cormorants would just lay new ones; the oiling process, however, keeps the birds actively sitting on the deceased embryos until their fertile period has expired for the year.

Wildlife officials believe the oiling process can reduce the annual hatch by as much as 90 percent this year.

The second phase of the population control program will come through a combination of shooting and trapping. The dead birds from these activities will be either burned or buried with careful records kept as authorities look to reduce the adult population by approximately 15 percent.

In addition to those involved in the lethal controls and egg-oiling, a second group will be conducting a simultaneous research project in this area. Radio transmitters will be affixed to some of the live birds to chart their movements in and out of the various colonies. Other research will be conducted to determine the effectiveness of the program and what impact it may have on other species.

The program apparently does not have the full support of everyone.

"There is no question there are people who oppose this and some who are doubtful it is even necessary," said Butchko, adding with a laugh, "There are not many of those people in the Cedarville-Hessel area."

Butchko seemed a little bit surprised lethal control was even allowed to begin this year as he anticipated a court injunction. He confirmed there is still a lawsuit challenging the pilot program, but the window of opportunity to halt this summer's activities has apparently come and gone.

"Our actions can and will proceed as we planned," said Butchko.

The double-crested cormorant has long been the primary suspect in the declining fish populations in and around the Les Cheneaux Islands Chain. Consuming, on average, a pound of fish per day and capable of eating fish up to 14 inches in length, it is believed by many throughout the region that the cormorants decimated the perch and has taken a toll on many other fish populations not only on the northern shores of Lake Huron but in the St. Mary's River System and on many inland lakes as well.

While there have been some comments falling under the heading of "Too little, too late," most local residents, it appears, have welcomed the new pilot program -- especially the lethal control for the adults -- with open arms.


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## mallardtone-man (Nov 20, 2002)

H e l l yes! Thats what we need, kill those birds!


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## boots741 (Feb 20, 2004)

Make it statewide, they can really putting a hurt on some of the fishing, they must be controlled !


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## archie holst (Aug 18, 2003)

Couldn't agree more!


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## Bmac (Jul 7, 2002)

A friend who has a cabin in the Cedarville area told me that the Cormorant Control order had been placed on hold. He said PETA got an injunction out east. I have not heard anything, anyone else? I also heard that a few "enterprising" raccoons had made their way to some of the islands where the cormorants nest. I wonder what PETA would say about this. :lol: The raccoons are just doing what comes naturally.


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## Northbay (Jun 25, 2002)

Just got back from my annual June fishing trip to Ontario. On the way up Saturday bought a Toronto paper in the Soo. Got to camp was reading this item in there. Had to get back to "civilization" before could post here. Kinda funny the writer seems more concerned about the lead used to shoot the birds than anything else.

3,199 cormorants killed
No one knows if cull of 6,000 will help

Up to 15 tonnes of corpses to be compost


KATE HARRIES
ONTARIO REPORTER

BRIGHTONThe double-crested cormorant is facing lethal force for the first time on the Great Lakes since it recovered from near-extinction 30 years ago.

On the Ontario side, parks officials are halfway through a cull of the birds that congregate on High Bluff Island, a bird sanctuary off Presqu'ile Point, while 175 kilometres to the east, New York State officials are shooting birds on Little Galloo Island.

Whether the cull will be effective in controlling the birds' expanding numbers is anyone's guess, says federal cormorant expert Chip Wiseloh of the Canadian Wildlife Services. 

"I don't know if anybody knows the right way to deal with the population," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. "It's certainly one way and I don't have any problem with it."

The plan here, approved by Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay two months ago, is to eliminate 6,000 birds. 

Environmentalists and animal rights activists decry the operation as needless slaughter of vulnerable nesting birds. Many locals see it as a long-needed first step in controlling greedy, dirty fish-eaters.

Parks officials say the operation has been going smoothly.

"We haven't had any problems in terms of operational issues," Presqu'ile Provincial Park superintendent Tom Mates said yesterday. "We're just moving forward with the management strategy. It's right on schedule."

In 10 days of shooting since May 6, a total of 3,199 cormorants have been killed by parks staff armed with .22-calibre rifles, using lead shot. They are targeting 6,000 nests, taking out one bird per pair on each nest, Mates said.

The birds' corpses are being composted on the island under an environment ministry certificate that allows for disposal of up to 15 tonnes of waste. 

Mates said the compost would be monitored to ensure no contaminants, like lead, which is toxic, escape.

The ministry contends the cull is needed to preserve trees on the island, being killed by the cormorants' high-nitrogen droppings, and to protect habitat for other birds being crowded out.

Environmentalists say the trees in question have no particular value and the other species  great blue herons and black crowned night herons  have steadily increased since the cormorant numbers build up in the early 1990s

"I wonder if cormorants aren't part of the stimulus," said resident Doug McRae, former head naturalist at the park and member of a local group monitoring Presqu'ile's status as an internationally designated important bird area.

McRae said he thinks Ontario should value the birds of Presqu'ile.

"What we have here is the largest and most diverse colony on the Great Lakes," he said, suggesting tour boats could take people out to enjoy the spectacle of so many gulls, terns, herons and, of course, cormorants.

Pat Boyce, president of the Presqu'ile cottagers' association, would not be among those catching a ride.

"They pollute the bay and they eat all the fish," she said of the cormorants. "I certainly don't feel like going in for a swim after I see them land in the bay."

Even though High Bluff Island is off-limits during summer months because it's a bird sanctuary, "we used to be able to go out in the boat around the island and not have that terrible smell."

Retired teacher Doug Cheer thinks fondly of the days, back in the '90s, when trophy fish were caught off Presqu'ile. No more, he said in an interview at his home by Presqu'ile Bay. 

"The cormorants have done a serious number on our fishery," he said, expressing hope that the cormorant kill will be carried out across the Great Lakes. "Either you want birds or you want fish. That's the way I see it."

McRae said it's clear the true reason for the cull is so the ministry can placate anglers and commercial fishermen who wrongly blame cormorants for a decline in the fishery.

Last year, the group pulled out of involvement with the ministry's control operation through egg-oiling and nest destruction. 

"We had agreed to monitor what they were doing and provide some advice," McCrae said. Advice was ignored and non-target species were disrupted, so "We feel we were absolutely duped."

Yesterday was a day off for ministry shooters, who will continue the task Monday, Mates said.

It was quiet on the island  too quiet, said Anna Maria Velastro, one of a handful of environmentalists who try to maintain a daily presence in a canoe off the island in the belief the shooting stops when people are around.

"I actually feel really sick I couldn't get someone out on Tuesday, so they shot 439 birds. I feel personally responsible for those birds."

Velastro has seen dead birds on the beach and in the water but the ministry is vigilant about picking up corpses. "They don't want any pictures."

"There's a bird in trouble," said McRae. Through his scope, a solitary cormorant could be seen, buffeted against the rocky shore of Gull Island, just south of High Bluff, its neck rested sideways, its wing at an unnatural upward angle.

Wounded birds can take several days to die, McRae said.


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## Big Nic (Apr 23, 2004)

Hey Mallardtone Man ,

Listen young man , you need to watch what you say on this site. No one including myself is fond of the cormorants but your last post was uncalled for 
Regardless of someones personal views you DO NOT - I REPEAT , DO NOT call 
for violence.I do not care if you meant it to be funny it is no Joke . If a Anti -
hunter or PETA spokesperson ever got ahold of these types of comments they will do our cause nothing but HARM. Please watch what you say on this site


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