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by Doug McRae The Independent - June 7, 2006
Regardless of whether or not you support the practice of shooting thousands of cormorants at Presqu'ile each year, it's increasingly difficult to find anything positive to say about the way Ontario Parks and MNR has conducted this sorry affair.
The program has been scientifically and logistically flawed from the very beginning, and it is now costing taxpayers a small fortune - probably upwards of $250,000/year when all costs are added. Contrary to the official line, the cormorant management efforts on Gull and High Bluff Island have caused significant disturbance to the other colonial birds nesting in the same forest blocks, even driving one nesting species - Red-tailed Hawk - from the Park altogether.
High Bluff - once a quiet, seldom visited colonial bird sanctuary - is now a hive of human activity that has left birds disturbed and the land with deep
physical scars. These include building a plywood cabin and several outhouses, and driving ATV's all over the island creating kilometers of overlapping trails, many through biologically interesting areas.
Perhaps the most pitiful example of this program is the island's ever growing "compost facility", where the thousands of shot cormorants end up. Last year, the dump's allowable limit for mercury - accumulated in cormorants from the fish they eat - was actually exceeded, and Ontario Parks was forced to remove the mercury tainted "compost" to the Brighton Landfill.
Their solution for this year? Why, build a bigger composter of course, presumably to better dilute the mercury so they won't have to remove it again!
Because so many people - especially fishers - viscerally hate cormorants, the public has been willing to give Ontario Parks a pass when it comes to
scrutiny. But for those who have followed this project in detail over the years, it is a shocking example of waste, ineptitude, deception, and bad planning. Good questions have consistently been ignored, concerns and advice dismissed, and inconvenient facts glossed over. All of this has hurt relations with potential allies and has contributed to the economic losses in local tourism, as birders continue to abandon Presqu'ile in favour of friendlier, quieter places.
But there was something different with this year's killing effort, and it will very likely affect how this program unfolds in the future. The Achilles heel of this program is the cruelty inherent with this particular management effort. Thanks to the persistent efforts by some animal protection groups, observers have now amassed a veritable videotape library of the cruelty, and the associated inaction of Ontario Parks staff to reduce it. Now, the methods of the cormorant cull will be seen by the general public for the first time and the "free pass" which Ontario Parks has enjoyed to date, will be over.
I would hope that even people who hate cormorants would at least agree that leaving wounded birds for many hours and even days to eventually succumb from a gunshot wound is unacceptable. Similarly, chicks left baking in the sun because their parent has been shot and can't shade them should also be unacceptable.
It's certainly wrong in waterfowl hunting where law and tradition dictate that you must make all reasonable efforts to locate shot birds. And it is
certainly true of the deer cull at Presqu'ile, where Ontario Parks has done an excellent job of ensuring that deer are killed quickly, and that none are wounded and escape. So why isn't this standard of conduct true for cormorants?
Ontario Parks, by their own figures, admit to retrieving only about two of three birds shot during a study last year. That means that fully one-third of the shot birds are either left dead or wounded in the trees, or they fly to the Lake and wait to die. We are not talking about a few birds, or a few dozen. We are talking about hundreds upon hundreds of cormorants crawling and floating around while they slowly die. Can you imagine the public outcry
if a third of the deer shot during the cull were left to run around the park hobbled and bleeding without anyone making a serious attempt to end their
suffering? There would be outrage!
The Presqu'ile cormorant management strategy will come up for public review and comment before next year's efforts begin. When this review process
starts, there will be a wealth of damaging correspondence and video to counter the official line given by Ontario Parks. Hopefully the interested public will take the time to understand this issue better, and help direct it to a more professional, scientifically based conclusion.
Published in The Independent Jun 7, 2006
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