Originally, the Government of Ontario proposed what I characterized as the single worst wildlife management decision of the modern era: naming the double-crested cormorant a “game” bird, and then have a province-wide open season on it from March 15 (before most cormorants, a migratory species, have arrived back in Ontario) to December 31 (long after they have left) with a daily bag limit of 50 birds. And, unheard of for any “game” species, anywhere, there would be no requirement that killed birds must be use for food. Cormorants, obligate fish-eaters, are, to most palates, inedible. Scientists, including the government’s own and those of the federal Canadian Wildlife Service, as well as independent ornithologists and cormorant researchers, plus hunters for whom the deliberate wastage of game is unimaginable, all objected.
There was a small victory in that this extermination program was dialed back a bit. The birds will not legally be slaughtered during the nesting season, leaving helpless young to die horribly, as originally planned. The idea now is to have an open season from September 15th to December 31st. But, hunters are still allowed to waste the “game” by delivering it to an approved waste disposal site, dumping it by following disposal of deadstock regulations under the Food Safety and Quality Act, 2001, or burying the birds they kill on their own land or private land they occupy, with the owner’s consent. Of course, there is no means of enforcing any of this. For details, click here.
Ontario has an astounding 125,000 lakes. The Ontario government claims there are 143,000 cormorants in the province. That works out to slightly more than 1.7 cormorants per lake! And, that is deemed too many? Of course they aren’t evenly distributed, which is part of the problem; cormorants are absent from most waters, wetlands, and islands, but in the relatively very few places where they are able nest, they are noticed. Furthermore, Ontario has approximately 197,000 holders of the small game permit required for the proposed killing of cormorants. If only 0.5% of hunters were to reach their daily limit for just 10 days of the three and a half month season, the “take” would exceed the total number of breeding cormorants in Ontario. The government, in contrast to how “game” is supposed to be managed, did not even try to estimate a “sustainable” level of cormorant killing. There is no mechanism to determine how many are being killed to prevent over-hunting and subsequent extirpation or extinction of species.
This policy violates two of the seven basic principles of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, which states that wildlife should only be killed for a legitimate, non-frivolous purpose (always open to interpretation, of course) and, of great relevance, that scientific management is the proper means for wildlife conservation.
Neither science, conservation, compassion, nor logic have been considered – the price of which is the lives of innocent birds.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry
