Pennsylvania puts cormorants on hit list

[Judy Reed]

This is late, but I thought you should see it.  Thanks to jean for sending it.
Judy.


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From: jean public <jeanp...@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 07:56:15 -0700 (PDT)
To: vegan...@comcast.net, human...@hsus.org, in...@peta.org, in...@cok.net
Cc: in...@defenders.org, in...@ddal.org, spaw...@earthlink.net, judy...@earthlink.net
Subject: murder the cormorants says pennsylvania

Pennsylvania puts cormorants on hit list
By MARC LEVY, Associated Press Writer
Published: Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Updated: Tuesday, May 16, 2006

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The double-crested cormorant, a voracious
fish-devouring bird that was vanishing only 35 years ago, has made a
triumphant comeback. So much so that several states now want the bird dead.

Pennsylvania is the latest to try to kill the cormorant, which has targeted
catfish hatcheries in the South, angered anglers in the Great Lakes and
killed every tree on a Vermont island.

In the coming days or weeks, federal wildlife sharpshooters will head out to
the state-owned Wade Island, near Harrisburg, in the middle of the night and
use air rifles and suppressed .22-caliber rifles to try to cull up to 50 of
the more than 120 cormorants believed to be nesting there.

Pennsylvania wants to stop the shiny black birds from stealing nesting space
from two birds on the state's endangered list: great egrets and
black-crowned night herons.

"It's a means of trying to give the great egret and black-crowned night
herons some breathing room," said Jerry Feaser, spokesman for the
Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Until a federal regulation approved in late 2003 loosened the rules, the
legal killing of cormorants was mostly confined to southern states, where
hatchery owners could kill them to protect their catfish.

Under the new rules, seven states brought in federal wildlife authorities to
kill cormorants, hoping to protect their fish, trees and other birds. The
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service says Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Mississippi and
Ohio are introducing programs this year.

In 2005, federal authorities reported killing just over 13,000
double-crested cormorants, a fourfold increase from a year earlier.
Cormorants now number an estimated 2 million in North America.

Vermont will be shooting cormorants for the third straight year in an effort
to regenerate cottonwoods, white pine and other trees on Young Island in
Lake Champlain. Cormorants on the six-acre island helped kill the trees by
stripping them of twigs for nests.

In Great Lakes states, the cormorant population has exploded, competing with
anglers for fish such as perch and walleye and hurting tourism. Minnesota is
killing cormorants at one of the state's most popular fishing spots, Leech
Lake, where they are blamed for making the prized walleye harder to catch.

"I've seen an area one time that's probably a good mile long and it was just
solid cormorants," said Walker, Minn., fishing guide Tom Wilson, who
estimates he has lost up to three-fourths of his business since 2002. "They
were up in the shallows and were feeding on everything."

The cormorant can be mistaken for a duck or a goose when it floats on the
water, but when it spreads its wings to a 4-foot span, it can be imposing,
like a gargoyle - with a spray of head feathers that stick up like a bad
haircut.

The birds winter in the South and nest in the north, mostly around the Great
Lakes, on the Canadian prairies and along the coasts.

Before 1972, cormorants were disappearing. Anyone was allowed to shoot them
and the pesticide DDT made their eggshells so thin that adults often
accidentally crushed their young.

But the federal government began protecting the birds in 1972 and outlawed
DDT soon after, bringing them back from the brink. Expanding fish hatcheries
and growing populations of small fish in the Great Lakes also helped,
providing better sources of food, said Shauna Hanisch, a Fish & Wildlife
Service biologist.

In the Great Lakes alone, the cormorant population has rebounded from 89
nests to more than 110,000.

"Cormorants went away for a generation of people and now they're back," said
Diane Pence, a Fish & Wildlife Service biologist. "And so we have a
generation that hasn't experienced the number of cormorants that used to
exist."

Pennsylvania wildlife officials tried and failed to lure egrets from Wade
Island to a neighboring island two years ago before deciding to kill the
cormorants.

Still, Stacy Small of Audubon Pennsylvania said the cormorant's reputation
for destructiveness - which she said is undeserved - has made states quick
to kill the birds before pursuing other options.

"I think it's a somewhat drastic measure," she said.


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