© Allen HackI don’t want to embarrass anyone by naming names—and, anyway, the name of the town doesn’t really matter. It’s a small community located in lovely mixed farmlands, woods, and a complex system of interconnected lakes, ponds, and marshes in eastern Ontario. We were there to address the council with a PowerPoint presentation to counter a mix of lies, half-truths, and deceptions that had earlier been presented to the council by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and the Ontario Commercial Fisheries’ Association.[teaserbreak]
Both were lobbying to have the double-crested cormorant removed from the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, thus joining the American crow, cowbird, grackle, house sparrow, red-winged blackbird, and starling as being a bird species that can be legally killed pretty well any time, any place, without first having to demonstrate a need to do so and obtain a permit.
This coincided with the desire of a small number of locals to cull cormorants who were nesting or roosting on a couple of islands on a major lake. The cormorants’ excrement had killed a few large white pine trees, and, of course, there were the usual concerns about the birds eating too many fish (even though 200 years of study and research showed that, except under exceptional or contrived conditions, such as a fish farm, the birds had virtually no discernible impact on populations of game or commercially exploited fish species).
My job was to answer “technical” questions. I tried. It’s always a challenge when dealing with people who, quite reasonably, do not understand basic ecological principles.
I’ve heard pretty well all the questions that can be asked about wildlife culling, but was not prepared for one I didn’t at first understand. Reworded and heavily paraphrased, it went something like this: “I’m not allowed to let my cows defecate or urinate into the lake, so why is it alright for the cormorants to do so?” Knowing that bacteria in concentrated runoff from livestock manure can sicken or kill humans, I thought he meant that cormorants might kill his cows! No… he just thought it was unfair that his cows couldn’t use the lakes as a private sewer.
I should have answered “Walkerton,” referring to an infamous case of mass E. coli poisoning that sickened more than 2,000 people, causing seven deaths. It was produced by runoff from cow manure, contaminating drinking water with a strain of E. coli bacteria found in livestock—but not cormorants—that is lethal to humans. I did explain that every wild animal excretes into the environment, but that the cleanest water in my home region (Toronto) was closest to the largest cormorant colony in the Great Lakes and near the intake that provides drinking water for the city (North America’s fourth largest).
It was also explained that most fish were found where the cormorants were. But, as the mayor so wisely opined, this was really all too much for a small, rural town council to comprehend.
“Ignorance” is not “wrong”; no one can be an expert on everything, or even most things, and even “experts” can disagree. Perhaps the best thing I did that day was donate about seven copies of Linda Wires’ book, The Double-Crested Cormorant: Plight of a Feathered Pariah, within the community. The book explains, in approximately 300 pages, what can’t be taught in a 10-minute presentation… if only it gets read.
Keep wildlife in the wild,
Barry