Quinte Fishing

Article in recent Canadian Geographic Magazine. Quote:" Rising numbers of double-crested cormorants in central Ontario have sparked cries of a new invasive species. Yet the cormorant is more likely a success story. Decimated by DDT use in the 60,s, the bird has made a miraculous recovery.
But under pressure from cottagers and anglers, the MNR oiled the eggs in
2750 nests, aborting upward of 8000 hatchlings in the Georgian Bay and North Channel regions. Historically abundant, cormorants have long been reviled and regularly massacred. Their enemies have even turned flame throwers against the rookeries, though the MNR describes its multi-year program more benignly as an "experimental control study".
Voracious eaters, cormorants are accused of depleting fish stocks, a claim that dozens of studies in the US and Canada have failed to prove."This is about sport fishing, not conservation" says Gregor Beck of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, which opposes the MNR measures. "It,s more politics than science."

I don,t know about the depletion of fish stocks part, after all, if the birds didn,t eat the fish, there would be more fish alive one would think!

The article does refute the notion that they are a foreign or introduced species and confirms that fish eaters such as cormorants and mergansers have always occupied a space in the Great Lakes ecosystem.