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Reading the 'Fishing News' new wire, the Belleville paper has been printing a number of articles on the cull of the cormorants at Presque Isle.
Here they are - Quite lengthy.
March 25th
NEW: Possible cormorant cull raising activists' ire
Spiel -- Thu, Mar/30/06
by Derek Baldwin,
Belleville Intelligencer
March 25, 2006
Cormorants may be in the line of fire again off Presqu’ile Provincial Park this spring and a federal wildlife agency is urging the province to arm its conservation officers again.
But the province refuses to confirm if it will, in fact, launch the cull.
In an interview, Ministry of Natural Resources spokeswoman Anne-Marie Flanagan said a decision has not been reached whether the birds will be shot or their eggs oiled to prevent hatching for a third year in a row.
“I think at this point, no decisions have been made yet,” Flanagan said from Toronto offices of Minister of Natural Resources David Ramsay.
More than 6,000 double-crested cormorants were killed under a government-approved cull in 2004 after complaints that an exploding cormorant population was denuding area islands of trees and greenery and depleting local waters of fish.
Last year, a second cull by ministry staff was reported to have killed 1,867 of the cormorants.
Despite calls by nature and animal groups for the cull to be cancelled this spring, the federal Canadian Wildlife Services believes that a controlled kill should go ahead this spring to further reduce the population of the large fish-eating bird.
In a CWS report obtained by The Intelligencer, the wildlife service “recommend(s) that management of cormorants (egg oiling, removal of nests, culling of adults) continue as planned, during the 2006 breeding season.”
The report was commissioned by the Ministry of Natural Resources through the federal agency, CWS. The wildlife service states that not enough birds were killed off in the 2005 cull.
To further reduce the cormorant numbers, the service suggests “priority should continue to be given to the removal of adults and nests located in live trees or above areas of live shrubby vegetation.”
To ensure that a controlled killing of the cormorants meets with more success this year if the Natural Resources Ministry so decides the report suggests a no-go zone be set up around small nesting islands in Lake Ontario where the birds nest to prevent protesters from disturbing the birds.
“The presence and activities of protesters during the 2005 season caused undue disturbance to nesting birds,” the report suggests.
It added that “protesters and their watercraft (both travelling and stationary)” caused the birds to exhibit “stress-related behaviours and flushing from nests.”
The result was that birds could not be cleanly shot when protesters had been flushing them from their nests it’s harder to hit a bird on the wing than on the nest.
The report also said “culling events were prematurely suspended or prolonged ... due to the presence of protesters down range from targeted areas. At a minimum, we recommend that a 150-metre buffer zone ... be strictly enforced.”
The CWS report outlines detailed reasons for keeping protesters at bay, as the protesters’ actions were observed in the past to have disturbed nesting habits of other birds in the area.
Word that another season of killing the cormorants may take place and that protesters be kept clear of nesting islands, has prompted an outcry from some environmental groups.
AnnaMaria Valastro of Peaceful Parks Coalition said members of her organization are appalled at the hunt.
“When we witnessed them shooting the birds, it was horrible. There were dozens of wounded birds in the water. This wasn’t clean,” Valastro said.
Valastro and her group are at odds with federal naturalists who compiled the report, in respect to disturbing nesting birds other than the cormorants.
According to her group, the “fledgling rate for Great Blue Herons for all nests ... has been consistently below average since cormorant management began at Presqu’ile. If this continues, it is questionable whether the population of herons can sustain itself over time. Since the ministry has been managing this bird sanctuary, it has been a total disaster. They are misfits in the world of ecological science and should be barred from further involvement in this program.”
Barry MacKay, who is a bird specialist for Toronto-based Cormorant Defenders International and was senior park naturalist at Presqu’ile Park in the 1960s, says he knows the natural cycles of the park and said intervention by the ministry will not achieve the desired results. If a cull is held again this spring, MacKay said his group will take to the waters in what’s being called as an “on-the-water observation team known as the Bird Brigade.”
The effort will observe and protest any planned culling, he said in an interview from Toronto.
“It makes no sense, they should stop it,” MacKay said. “The population will stabilize itself, it won’t grow exponentially.”
MacKay insists his research contradicts that done by the ministry to support the claim that killing cormorants will reduce stress on trees and other nesting birds such as the Blue Heron.
“I’ve researched this and found all three species go back in time before humans, they go back a long way and have co-existed. Nowhere is there a record of any cormorants ever wiping out any fish, tree or bird,” he said.
Complaints that the cormorants have wiped out old-growth trees on High Bluff Island are spurious, MacKay said, because that’s what bird colonies do in nature. In time, the trees grow back.
“This is part of the dynamic. Everything changes, there is no stability,” he said.
MacKay also dismissed claims the birds are raiding fish populations in Lake Ontario, noting that non-native salmon introduced into the lake are the largest consumers of small fish than any other high-level predator.
March 31st:
NEW: Cormorant cull will ensure natural balance
Spiel -- Tue, Apr/4/06
Editorial,
Belleville Intelligencer March 31, 2006
Even the organizations and individuals protesting the possibility of a cormorant cull at Presqu’ile Provincial Park this year would agree that the environment needs protection.
But is it the double-breasted cormorants that need to be shielded, or the fish they consume and the vegetation their droppings kill?
The evidence regretfully points to the birds as the culpable parties, and so, the cormorant cull should proceed for the third year in a row, as recommended by the federal Canadian Wildlife Services, and previously agreed to and carried out by the Ministry of Natural Resources.
One has only to go to the foot of Herchimer Avenue to witness how the cormorants have denuded Snake Island.
The same devastation goes for High Bluff Island at cormorant headquarters their colony nesting ground at Presqu’ile Provincial Park.
Cow Island off the harbour club and Indian Island in the Bay of Quinte near the Murray Canal will no doubt suffer the same fate, unless the cull is given the green light by the province, which has authority in this case.
The cormorants, virtually unseen in the Quinte area until the population exploded a few years ago, are also voracious consumers of fish.
Angling plays a significant role here, pumping millions into the local economy.
In 2004, about 6,000 birds were shot by staff off Presqu’ile Park.
Last year, with so-called naturalists stirring up the birds, the kill count was less than 2,000 a major shortfall.
It’s because of this decrease that the 2006 cull is definitely necessary.
Whether the cull will be by gun to reduce the adult population or by egg oiling to prevent hatching, or both, has yet to be decided.
Learning from last year, the Canadian Wildlife Services recommended a no-go zone be established around the cormorant nesting areas this time to prevent protesters from scaring off the birds.
What is offensive here is not the killing of cormorants to protect the vegetation and fish stocks, but that the majority of protesters to the cull are based outside the area, in large centres of population, Toronto, in fact.
Have they seen the stiff-necked birds arrive in flocks of hundreds, darkening the sky and leapfrogging their fish-gobbling way down the north side of the Bay of Quinte after flying in from Lake Ontario following the Murray Canal?
That was a sight unseen a few scant years ago.
The protesters must have witnessed the denuded High Bluff Island, yet they did their best to prevent the cull.
Do they feel the lightness of wallets because anglers have gone elsewhere due to dwindling fish stocks?
Don’t get this wrong. If it was money alone motivating the cull, if the birds were not so destructive, we would have a different opinion.
But based on the recommendation of experts, both federally and provincially, and the evidence to date, the cull should continue as before.
Stay Tuned
_________________
David Delcloo aka Superdad
(Retired)
Kingston
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