Jonny

Quotes from: The Rise of the Double-crested Cormorant on the Great Lakes: Winning the War Against Contaminants Environment Canada http://www.on.ec.gc....rmorants-e.html My comments in bold type. If the current rate of population growth continues, the Great Lakes cormorant population would increase to more than three-quarters of a million birds by the year 2000. However, this is unlikely to occur. Most animals which colonize new areas show a period of initial, unrestricted growth, just as we have seen with cormorants over the last 10-15 years. Such growth, however, can not be sustained forever.Eventually, the population outstrips its food supply, outgrows its habitat (or nesting areas), or is reduced by disease or predation. When this happens, the cormorant population can be expected to drop in numbers, until it stabilizes itself again. Cormorants sure aren't going to outgrow their habitat (nesting areas), not with all the thousands of islands that they have to choose from. Predation – like what, for example? Disease, yeah, let's wait to see if that happens in populations which have lots of room to spread out. Outstrip the food supply? Now there's a comforting thought. How much of the food pyramid will be left? According to fisheries biologists,stocks of the smaller prey fish have been decreasing dramatically in recent years. This decrease in the cormorants' food supply is probably already contributing to their decline on Lake Ontario. Um, so does that mean that cormorants are the reason for the decline, and that is leading to their own decline? No consolation for the lost resources and environment. The third concern is not such a clear issue. In northern Georgian Bay, fish harvesters feel that recent declines in local catches of yellow perch and smallmouth bass are the result of increased cormorant numbers at nearby colonies. As evidence they cite the ease with which a "meal" of fish was caught ten years ago, before the birds increased. Now, those fish are scarce and good catches are exceedingly rare. They also state that before cormorant numbers increased one could easily observe, when SCUBA diving, large and frequent schools of perch. These schools, too, have now disappeared. Fish and wildlife officials do not currently have sufficient data to properly evaluate this problem. It is true that cormorant numbers have increased in northern Georgian Bay during the last decade. Cormorants do eat yellow perch and bass,and if these species were locally abundant, they could form the major part of their diet. The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, with input from Environment Canada, are now undertaking a major study of the feeding habits of cormorants in Lake Huron in order to shed more light on this question. They really only need one piece of data. If the quota-controlled commercial catches were stable before the cormorants burst upon the scene, then 2+2 wouldn't be too hard. There is also concern about the effect of cormorants on the vegetation in their nesting grounds. Cormorants can damage vegetation by stripping leaves from trees. The combined weight of the birds and their nests can even break branches. But perhaps most importantly, their excrement, which rains down to the ground from their nests, kills the ground vegetation and eventually kills the nest tree. In some cases, the loss of these trees can lead to increased erosion. This is of particular concern on sand spits and barrier beaches which protect interior wetlands. In other areas, the vegetation may be of unusual natural significance, such as the islands in western Lake Erie which are forested by rare stands of Carolinian woodlands. The large cormorant colonies there could seriously impact or even destroy this vegetation. So there's concern about rare stands of woodlands. I'd like there to be concern about ALL stands of woodlands, especially on islands. My wife and I travelled through the northern States a couple of years ago. We stopped for gas at a town in North Dakota. The town was built around a nice lake, maybe an 80 to 100 acre lake, and in the middle of the lake was an island that I guess would have been beautiful at one time. All the island had on it was skeletons of trees, with cormorants perched on top. That's what those townsfolk got for not doing anything – an eyesore that will probably still be like that when their kids are grown.

To my mind, the Ontario MNR has a few key reasons for not doing anything about cormorants: Doing nothing costs nothing. Doing nothing avoids controversy. I'm sure the MNR would rather weather complaints from fishing/cottaging/camping stakeholders than from the flak they think they would get from the general public and the tree-huggers. Doing nothing is simply easier than doing something. The MNR isn't the most innovative or forward-thinking organization around. I don't think their reasoning includes anything that says that a control program can't have significant results. I think that's smokescreen (Cookslav, I think, kinda nailed it when he talked about overfishing/overhunting vs culling). It's hard to speak for other parts of Ontario but people around Nipissing love the lake enough, and have a close enough connection to it, that if a cormorant control program were initiated on the lake with the avowed goal of reducing the number of cormorants by culling and oiling eggs, the public opposition would be minimal. I'm pretty confident that would translate to other areas and lakes as well. As for cost, if the MNR were to get off their butts (if they would quit rationalizing and studying the problem) and give people the opportunity to do something, I think you would have tons of unpaid volunteers come forth, made up of sport fishers, outfitters, cottagers, first nations, you name it.

I guess you could call cormorants "invasive" on Nipissing, where it seems they never were. The Nipissing ecosystem got along just fine without them but now we have thousands. With the existing pressures this highly productive but stressed lake faces, we don't need a new, unchecked source of pressure. If there were a program to eradicate them on Nipissing, and/or other smaller surrounding lakes (i.e. Nosbonsing) I'd be at the front of the volunteer line, and I'd help out for free. To put it bluntly, in our ecosystem, cormorants are a garbage species.

I think it's a Dodge model they used to make in the 60's.

Sorry, you'll have to take my word that I looked at it. And my opinion. I won't discuss this any more here. I know where this global warming stuff always goes, and I don't think this is the thread or the forum for it.

I did look over the main features of the Stern review, and the positive and negative assessments of it. I'd say that like everything else, it's inconclusive. But anyway, back to cormorants if anyone has more to add... Heh Heh, I wish Fishn'wire would go back and fix that title! I've seen cormonart so many times I'm almost tempted to spell it that way!

Well we're getting away from cormorants completely, despite your creative injection of them at one point. ... but anyway... As fossil fuels dwindle, energy will get more expensive and alternative sources will then become "economical". It's going to happen whether we put off alternative sources or not. The only thing that changes by jumping into alternatives now is that it gets expensive FASTER, as we are finding out thanks to Mr. McGuinty. In my opinion we should have gone wholesale NUCLEAR for our power grid. The ultimate green energy for a country like Canada.

Good points blarg, sinker, hammercarp. Here's something I've been wondering, looking at those pics of the numerous cormorants on the "Rockpile" when there used to be none... We are told, on pretty good authority I would assume, that cormorants were almost extinguished in the Great lakes Basin because of DDT. Since the DDT was in fish, and since cormorants and gulls eat mostly fish, why would the DDT have virtually wiped out the cormorants but not the gulls? Is it possible that a cormorant's metabolism requires it to eat a LOT more than a gull, thus concentrating a lot more DDT in its body?

Good to know, Bernie. I didn't know anything about that far back. I know that in the 50's, 60's and 70's, there were none on the lake. Here's an example of cormorants and herring gulls. The "Rockpile" near the Goose Islands used to be exclusively gull territory...

I'm into fantasy football too. We have a 12 man league that's been running for years (starting in days when the commish had to do the calculations by hand!) We run a Yahoo league based on the NFL. I'm also a big NFL fan. I have no use for the CFL though; it's a poor game by comparison. My team has always been the Steelers, but I also like the Bills, the Eagles, and the Packers. It's going to be a long drought again till the next season.

Please tell me it's NFL, or we've got another bone of contention.

It's not a perfect analogy but it's the best I can come up with, sorry. If I made the analogy any closer, then it would be identical, and not an analogy at all, and would lose its illustrative value. Sure. If we don't catch any fish I can always blame the cormorants! I don't mind left-wing pinkos, unless they're too fanatic about it.

Yep, starting to plug up one hole and another one opens up. Good stuff. I started doing that many years ago in my own way, changing my own attitude to make pike and perch just as much a target of my fishing efforts as pickerel. They threaten our quality of life. Fishing is more than a pastime; it's a way of life. Not to mention - as I keep injecting - the environment. Can you think of any other creature that can absolutely destroy a beautiful island in a matter of one summer? That's not what I had in mind, and I didn't see it coming across that way.

Yes, obviously a solution that has some long-term potential, but WAY too slow to fix an explosion of numbers. When I brought up the moral/ethical idea I did have in mind that the morals or ethics are not fixed absolutes. In other words, an ethical stance would not mean no culling (killing) under any circumstances. In management of fish and game (or other orders such as insects, amphibians, etc.) moral or ethical arguments would apply in a similar way as to the provision of beef, pork or poultry for the table. Of course that's not to say that wildlife doesn't have some intrinsic values other than edibility. What happens if the fox won't leave the hen house alone, even though you've done what you can to keep him out? You shoot the fox. I would look at the ethical side of culling cormorants more like a farmer dealing with a plague of locusts. The farmer doesn't care where the locusts came from. All he's concerned with is that they weren't there and eating his crops before, and he wants to re-establish the previous status quo (i.e. no locusts and a good crop). He might be losing a significant but bearable portion of his crops to deer, rodents and birds, but he doesn't need the added burden of the locusts.

The only thing that I have run across that could serve as an answer, or part of an answer, is that now that cormorants have survived decimation by DDT, their populations rage unchecked because they have few natural predators. Apparently on ocean coastlines of North America, bald eagles are a significant predator on cormorants. There aren't many bald eagles in the Great Lakes Basin, I don't think. None. We would simply be back to where we were 10 or 15 years ago with few or no cormorants on most lakes. In most cases I would probably consider it drastic. In the case of cormorants, which were not necessary to our ecological balance and indeed now unbalance it, no, I don't. Actually I see it as the hard way. Controlling cormorants would take a LOT of work, and more with each passing year that we do nothing. The easy way (but hard on the fisheries and the environment) would be to do nothing and let the cormorant population peak, with the attendant fishery and habitat destruction. I think I'm looking at ease/difficulty from a practical standpoint whereas you may be looking at it from a moral/ethical one.

If you are addressing two major problems and you push for a third related one to be addressed, is that scapegoating? I don't think so. I have a feeling you think it's scapegoating because to you it seems that controlling cormorant populations is a drastic strategy. Did you mean "I do not think that it is ideal"? Inertia is on your side. It's easier to do nothing than it is to do something. You're right - we do have the largest impact, but we also have the largest say in how to manage resources. Sometimes we even have to RE-balance things, such as expanding deer hunting opportunities because there are too many as a result of lack of predators (which we got rid of). I don't see a "dangerous precedent". We're not talking about getting rid of a vital part of the ecosystem. We're talking about getting rid of (or controlling) an organism without which the ecosystem was working just fine. Letting cormorants proliferate is in some respects the same as introducing rabbits to Australia. We are supposed to believe that cormorants were at one time common in the Great Lakes basin. I wonder, is there evidence of flocks of thousands during, say, the days of the Fur Trade, or of flocks so large that they darkened the sky? Or what about say the 1920's or 30's, before DDT?

For sport anglers on Nipissing we have reduced limits and slot limits. For the native netting fishery there is a quota (perhaps excessive, but a quota). Those are the two biggest impacts on the lake. Cormorants are the wild card... something that didn't impact the lake in the past. We don't really need thousands of cormorants thrown into the mix. They're NOT a scapegoat --- we know that fishery problems don't rest solely (or even mainly) with cormorants. What they are is an unaddressed problem loaded on top of other problems that are already being addressed.

Yes, Greg, I read the previous thread in its entirety. I should give you a bit of background so you know where I'm coming from. When I was a kid, I fished Lake Nipissing with great regularity with my parents in the 50's and 60's and we didn't even know what a cormorant looked like. There were absolutely NONE on the lake. If we had seen one we would have researched it. My family are avid bird watchers. At times when a cormorant flock on Nipissing is the largest, I've done counts on them, and I have seen flocks that easily top a thousand birds. Once I estimated 1500 by going through a video I took in slow motion mode. You will see "600+" mentioned in the 2004 letter because I had not seen the bigger flocks yet. I've been at this for a while, with letters to the minister and letters to the editor of the North Bay Nugget.

Fact is, there are a lot of significant factors to point a finger at, including sport fishing, but I don't think that means we should stop pointing fingers. I don't remember the exact netting quota for the native fishery on Nipissing but I believe it's pegged at about 65-70 % of the total allowable catch of walleye. Is it too high? Nobody is really sure. Sport fishermen impact the lake heavily as well, summer and winter. We already have reduced limits and a slot size for walleye (for sport angling) because the fishery is stressed. Add thousands upon thousands of cormorants to that scenario and it's no wonder that the idea of controlling cormorants gets a lot of support. I mean, look at the pictures of that cut-open cormorant. That bird gorged itself on dozens of bait-fish perch in one very short feeding period (the perch are hardly digested). The thing is a damned underwater vacuum cleaner! Repeat that every day, or several times a day, over the open water season and multiply it by thousands of birds and you start to have an inkling of the impact these birds probably have. I don't think I'm comfortable with throwing up our hands and saying either: a ) There's nothing we can do or b ) This is a natural cycle and we just have to let it take its course Both of these things seem to be a cop out if we want to preserve fisheries and preserve environment. I'll show you something I'm afraid of happening, separate from the fishing issue... The attached photos show some of the small island habitat that is rather rare along the north shore of Nipissing. If I see cormorants starting to show indications of nesting on these islands and turning them into a stinking wasteland, you can be sure I won't be sitting around waiting for someone else to do something...

I didn't say their population growth is limitless. What I said was that by the time the population crashes there will probably have been a huge amount of damage. As far as "we're too late", I am willing to say you might be quite right. Maybe there never was anything we could do about it. But we certainly have affected the natural process in other places : carrier pigeons, bison, whales, etc. etc. etc. Maybe there never was anything we could do about cormorants because... well... who would ever eat one?!

Normally that would be the way to go - let a natural cycle take care of things. But somehow the cormorant population is exploding and there's a chance that by the time a natural balance re-asserts itself, there will have been so much damage to fisheries and to some areas of habitat (i.e. picturesque islands) that you and I will never live to see an upswing. Regardless, if the reports of these huge flocks that darken the sky are accurate, we've already missed the chance to control the situation. While people have been sitting on their hands wondering whether things should be done, the time to do them is probably already past.

Nothing major, I wouldn't think. Of course there is a difference in how and why we treat the mosquito problem and how and why we treat the cormorant problem (thought the fact remains that they are both good examples of how we like to manage problems). Maybe a better analogy would be locusts in a farmer's grain field. The farmer wants the grain for his own uses but the locusts will eat it all up if they get the chance. Does it make sense for the farmer to do all he can to control the depredations of the locusts? I took "we are the only species that can make logical decisions and use reason" as a statement of fact. I can appreciate you weren't trying to get philosophical, if you say so. I think I was merely pointing out that it could go that way. Thanks. Is everything in this thread a simple repetition of what's in that one? I'll have a look...

I certainly am. Like I said, we like to control species that we find a nuisance. That applies to mosquitoes, cormorants and any number of other species. No problem. But when you state such an opinion, you're on philosophical ground as well as just factual. I wasn't reading these threads a month ago. It seems to me that threads with this kind of issue will keep coming up from time to time, as long as an issue is not resolved. Are you suggesting that, since there has already been some discussion in the past, we should now simply ignore the problem and not talk about it any more?

Maybe someone does. I thought it was bad when I was able to count flocks of about 1000 to 1500 on Nipissing. What you describe would be simply outrageous.

That starts to tread on philosophical ground, but the fact is that we humans like to arrange things to suit ourselves. As far as animal life is concerned we like to control populations of creatures that we find a nuisance. Think as basic as mosquitoes which carry malaria, and insects and animals that destroy crops. I'm not suggesting that the thought in previous posts has gone this far, but should we feel guilty about that?