Presented by Barry Kent MacKay
At A Symposium About Double-crested Cormornats
Sorting facts from the "fishy" myths about their impact on the Great Lakes ecosystem
Toronto, Ontario
Saturday May 5, 2007
Let me first say to you that
I am not a scientist. It had been my
ambition from early childhood to get a degree in ornithology, but illness at
age 16 ended that dream, if not my passion for ornithology. That said, I want to give you a personal view
of why I am involved with the debate over cormorants.
In order to do that, I need
to go back to the mid-1950s and early `60s when I was a kid who was perhaps too
often underfoot at the department of ornithology of the Royal Ontario Museum, taught
by the ever-patient staff, Jim Baillie, Lester Snyder, Terry Shortt, El Taylor
and Don Baldwin.
The senior technician for the
division of ornithology, Cliff Hope, had died in 1953. His strong personality and penchant for
practical jokes lived on in the memories and tales of his colleagues and
friends at the museum. And among the
tales told were those about the late Jack Miner, who had passed away nine years
earlier than Hope, leaving a legacy of countless awards and honours, mostly for
his involvement with Canada Geese, in
Early in his life Miner, an
ardent hunter, had discovered that wild geese, when not hunted, could be tamed. An evangelical Christian fundamentalist,
Miner was contemptuous of science. His
relationship with my adult friends at the museum had not always been cordial.
Miner shot and trapped hawks
and owls, crows, grackles, starlings, skunks, foxes, weasels, raccoons…just
about anything predatory, citing scripture’s assurance that he had dominion
over all animals, and the undeniable fact that these carnivorous animals
competed with “mankind” for a finite number of “game” animals. In the case of hawks and owls, they ate other
“valuable” animals, like songbirds who were really pretty and ate a lot of nasty
insects and where therefore our friends.
I was born after the Federation
of Ontario Naturalists and the Canadian Audubon Society and others had
successfully waged an enormous battle to convince the Ontario Department of
Lands and Forests to legislate protection for the hawks and owls of
It had been an uphill battle,
based on science that included contributions from the
I still have a little educational
booklet, The Hawks and Owls of Ontario, written by L.L. Snyder and illustrated
by T.M. Shortt *. It contains pie-charts
showing what the hawks, falcons, owls and other raptors of
The booklet, Mr. Snyder told
me, had been part of the effort, prior to my birth, to convince hunters,
farmers and others not to shoot the birds of prey, most of which ate animals,
such as rodents, that were directly injurious to human interests. All raptors had a role to play within nature
and the natural scheme of things even when killing the “good” animals, like
game and song birds.
Jack Miner, given dominion
over the animals by no less of an authority than God, had campaigned against
the hawks and owls. Miner had decided to
push his point home in a manner that caused amusement in the museum’s
department of ornithology. Miner stuffed
dead warblers into the mouths of the Sharp-shinned Hawks he had shot or trapped
and killed, and then delivered them to the museum for its collections, and for
the ongoing research into what birds of prey ate.
What Miner did not know was
that hawks don’t swallow their prey whole.
Owls might, but not hawks and his ruse was obvious to the real experts.
Let me flash forward to an
experience about two years ago, at Queen’s Park,
Flying cormorants don’t carry
large fish dangling from their beaks.
The photo was obviously faked, just as Jack Miner had tried to fake the
evidence against hawks, more than half a century earlier. Jack didn’t have access to computer imaging
and PhotoShop. But in both instances, real
experts knew better.
And yet it is absolutely true
that Sharp-shinned Hawks really do eat warblers and other songbirds, and these can
include endangered species. Other hawks
and owls do eat game birds or poultry, and cormorants really do eat fish, and
all these predators have, at some time, been lethally culled in large numbers,
accordingly.
Things change. The Federation of Ontario Naturalists is now
Ontario Naturalists; the Canadian Audubon Society is now the Canadian Nature
Federation, and not only has the Department of Lands and Forests become the
Ministry of Natural Resources, at some time between my childhood and the
present it stopped placing strychnine poison in baits in Algonquin Provincial
Park in order to kill wolves. It used to
do this because, as people like Jack Miner long ago, or the Ontario Federation
of Anglers and Hunters, currently, will tell you, there are too many wolves. The poisoning ended years ago, although there
is still a lot of anti-wolf sentiment and belief that
But change still happens. That includes our understanding of ecology
and the environment, which continually develops and is refined through time.
When I was a kid I was taught
by people like Mr. Snyder that predators played what was called an important
role in nature. Was I taught incorrectly? Should that view, which was relatively new at
the time, change back to the older view?
Certainly it seemed like a mixed message in my youth when, at the same
time, wolves were being poisoned and bounties were being paid on predators. Ministry policy is still hopelessly confusing
to me, all these years later, as I will explain in a few moments.
We can trace the origins of Canadian
law to English law. English effort to
reduce, through legislation, populations of wildlife deemed to be “too many”, formally
began back to 1543, when no less a fan of execution than King Henry the VIII,
supported an act to destroy choughs, crows and rooks.** You can’t deny that such birds do eat the
eggs of other birds.
In fact, the law quickly
expanded to include many other species, and billions of birds and other animals
were culled in the ensuing years and centuries, up to the present in the
Always and without exception,
there was a solid reason provided to reduce the numbers of these animals. Ospreys were virtually wiped out in
My first visit to Presqu’ile
Provincial Park was around 1957. That
was also when I saw my first cormorants.
Along the shorelines were great stinking piles of dead fish. Some were fresh and I sketched them and stuck
a few into a jar of rubbing alcohol to be identified later. Some were ripe and attracted flies and sandpipers. I sketched them, too. I learned that the fish were Alewives, and
not considered to be native to
That was in keeping with
another thing I was being taught: that as a generality it is not a good idea to
put non-native animals or plants into the environment. Animals and plants co-evolve with all the other
species in their native homes, within the environmental parameters of those
homes. They form a dynamic whereby what
Mr. Snyder called a “balance” was more or less maintained.
Bringing in another,
non-native species can upset all that and result in problems, perhaps by
displacing native species, or, in the absence of natural predators that evolved
with them, becoming super-abundant.
Starlings, pigeons, House Sparrows, Norway Rats, Dandelions, cabbage
butterflies, gypsy moths, Japanese beetles, House Mice and the like were among
the usual examples of one or both of these concerns that were mentioned in my
childhood teaching, with the odd reference to things like mongooses on tropical
islands. Zebra Mussels, Dog-strangling
Vine and Garlic Mustard and so much more, came later.
A Christmas gift of 1955 was
a copy, still cherished, of a little book called Wildlife in Color***. Put out by the National Wildlife Federation
in the
Peterson pointed out that
some introductions might be “all to the good”.
There would be no frogs in
No Ruffed or Spruce Grouse
are in
And look at all those dead
Alewives, year after smelly year. I
would learn, and one day observe, that there can be major die-offs of native
animals in native habitat, including cormorants, but to me as a child those
tons of dead Alewives indicated that Lake Ontario was not where they belonged,
now that I understood that they were not native and were not living in habitat
in which they had evolved.
Double-crested Cormorants
were, according to my various reference books, clearly native, if not common,
in
So when others said that
Double-crested Cormorants were spreading into the
But I knew that they were
native to North America, from
That might have been my view
to the present, had it not been for the fact that as the birds increased in
numbers, they were persecuted for doing so.
The tolerance for them is very close to zero.
If there was no government
sponsored control of cormorants in the
A difference that was obvious
was that the hawks were unquestionably native to
Indeed, up to last year, and
perhaps up to this moment, the Minister of Natural Resources, himself, refers
to them as “alien” or “invasive”, although to me even if they had been absent
from the Great Lakes, the terms would be as disingenuous as calling Gadwalls or
Northern Cardinals or Little Gulls, or Kentucky Coffee Trees “alien” or
“invasive”, which no one does.
If they were alien, it could
theoretically be fair to argue that the impact they had on native species was
unnatural and unprecedented, and like Garlic Mustard, Sea Lampreys or European
Starlings, they were coming into contact with species with which they did not
co-evolve, and thus theoretically could be potentially deleterious to the
survival of at least some of those species.
In fact, that is exactly what was being argued against them by the Ontario
Federation of Anglers and Hunters, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.
However, I learned that both
the native prey species and the various plant and bird species associated with
cormorant nesting colonies in the
But remember the Alewives who
died in such large numbers when I was young?
Well, not only are they non-native, they are very important to the diet
of the Double-crested Cormorants in the lower Great Lakes, and are, because of
their spawning habits, of particular use to the cormorants in the nesting
season.
It seemed to me to be very
possible that Alewives could enhance the carrying capacity of the areas they
occurred, for cormorants, unless, of course, such abundance of cormorants ever occurred
in the absence of Alewives. I assumed it
had not because that is what the experts were saying.
Alewives were obviously
important to
But were Alewives really the
determining factor in the presence or absence of the number of cormorants
nesting in the
I recall asking an MNR
fishery biologist why it was that cormorants had been absent from the
That was about three or four
years ago, just before I began to hear of the work of Linda Wires and Francesca
Cuthbert, who were actually doing something I naively assumed might already
have been done; they were looking at the historical record for indications of
Double-crested Cormorant abundance in
Wires and Chuthbert’s
paper****, finally published last year, was a breakthrough to my own
understanding of cormorants. There was
solid indication that cormorants were once at least as common in North America
as they are now, and most likely much more so, but were killed off physically,
like so many other predatory and game species, in the 19th century,
although beginning earlier than that, and continuing to the present. We all knew that there had been major losses in
cormorant numbers from the negative effects on reproduction caused by
widespread use of DDT after World War II, but it did not appear that the
species had been common in the
Why would a fish-eating species
found from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from
It was, fittingly, the
department of ornithology at the
In discussing the
Double-crested Cormorant, McIlwraith states that the species: “…occasionally visits inland lakes…”
He describes collecting a
specimen, and then writes, “All the Cormorants have the reputation of being
voracious feeders, and they certainly have a nimble way of catching and
swallowing their prey, but it is not likely that they consume more than other
birds of similar size.” The prejudice we
now see against cormorants was present back then, as it was against herons,
loons, kingfishers, mergansers, grebes, Ospreys, and other birds that eat fish,
along with the bias I’ve discussed that was directed against hawks, owls,
wolves and so much more.
But did the cormorants breed
in the
McIlwraith states: “The
preparations for incubation are made about the 10th of May, in large
communities, on islands and lakes and almost impenetrable marshes, where there
are some large old trees, in which they most frequently build their coarse but
substantial nests. These are usually
bulky from having been added to every year, and consist of weeds, vines and
sticks piled carelessly around a deep depression, in which is deposited the
three pale greenish or bluish eggs. It
is not an uncommon sight to see one or more of these nests on the same tree in
which there are a number of heron nests, and the owners seem to live in
harmony.”
Clearly he was familiar with
Double-crested Cormorants nesting in
He concludes his section on
Double-crested Cormorants by saying:
“When the young are sufficiently grown, they gather into immense flocks
in unfrequented sections, and remain until the ice-lid has closed over their food
supply, when they go away, not to return till the cover is lifted up in the
spring.”
Immense flocks of young
birds, prior to the 20th Century, in
Just last November 1st,
in support of a private member’s bill supported by the Ontario Federation of
Anglers and Hunters, Minister of Natural Resources David Ramsay told parliament
that the Double-crested Cormorant, “…has caused severe terrestrial damage on
many of the islands in Lake Ontario and has obviously threatened the commercial
and sports fishery in our Great Lakes and other inland lakes as they’re moving
in now.”
With reference to Provincial
Member of Parliament’s Ernie Parsons, who proposed the bill, Minister David
Ramsay said, “I understand very much his motives bringing this forward. I wish him well with the bill and very much
support what he’s doing.”
Mere citizens like I can’t
simply sit down and talk to David Ramsay, and even if we could how long would
it take to disabuse him of what would appear to be such a deeply ingrained
antipathy toward cormorants? Remember,
none of the facts presented to him by the experts at the
In reading this sort of thing
we must remember that generally the public, including politicians and the
media, are often uninformed about wildlife and words used by these two
gentlemen colour general opinions. If
the cormorant was, as Parsons says, once native, are they not still
native? That would be true of any other
species. And if they were in small
numbers, why did Thomas McIlwraith, a competent observer whose opinions on
other birds are accepted by the scientific community, talk of “immense flocks”
of young birds in 19th century
Mr. Parsons does not say
which species of birds or fish are being driven out by cormorants, but clearly
that is a question that needs to be asked, given that there is no record of any
of our native fish or birds being driven out before, either here in
When, in 1837, John James
Audubon visited
As soon as hostilities in the
War of 1812 ended, commercial fisheries opened and very rapidly expanded in the
While the cormorant was not a
“game” species shot for food, and thus does not show up in kitchen middens or
in market place records, the same prejudices against them that apply now would
have applied then, even more so, since at least by now we have the studies done
over the last century or two that show this species does not wipe out wild fish
stocks or kill off herons, however much Mr Ramsay and Mr Parsons may think
otherwise. It was not until the 1930s
that the
I think the evidence
indicates that it did not take too many years of constantly attacking nesting
colonies on islands and headlands in the
If Audubon, or another
collector or ornithological diarist of similar ability and interest had visited
the Great Lakes, instead of
We have absolutely no
evidence of Trumpeter Swans nesting anywhere in Ontario, and they most
certainly are migratory and are “game” birds who migrated through Ontario and
thus do show up in kitchen middens, but the burden of proof for them having
nested in this region is absurdly lower than for cormorants or even Wild
Turkeys, to the point that the Ministry of Natural Resources allows them to be
“reintroduced” where they were never historically recorded and does not call
them “alien”.
The “evidence” for Trumpeter
Swans nesting in
And as a possibly relevant
aside, McIlwraith does describe various White Pelicans in
There are some early 20th
Century records of Double-crested Cormorant colonies from the Great Lakes, and
Wires and Cuthbert’s paper cites indirect but compelling evidence of their
presence as breeding species prior to then, and it really seems that the onus
should be on the deniers to explain why it is that all of this does not
matter. Far from indicating that this is
a species that is, to use Mr. Ramsay’s words, “moving in now”, the evidence, as
well as common sense, indicates it was always here; it is a recovering species.
I believe I had it wrong
initially, assuming that those early 20th century Great Lakes
records indicated an eastward moving vanguard from the prairies into the
But I now see those undoubted
early colonies as far more likely being the dwindling remnants of a once
substantial population of cormorants nesting in the
This is important because
being a native species means that what they do is natural, has been done
before, and obviously has helped define the faunal and floral composition of
the region. Animals do interact with
their respective habitats. They don’t
destroy habitat they inhabit because they are
the habitat, or part of it. Instead of
being concerned about what the impact of cormorants is on Kentucky Coffee-Trees
or Great Blue Herons, I am concerned about what the impact of maintaining
Kentucky Coffee-Trees or Great Blue Herons is on Double-crested
Cormorants.
That seems to be an
incomprehensible concept for many wildlife managers, who, in the best tradition
of the late Jack Miner, cherry-pick which species are “good” or “desirable” and
which ones are not, and then present reasons for those choices which vary in
their validity, some major reasons being utterly bogus, others being extraneous
and many being hypocritical. Thus we see
numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers about cormorants published which begin
with an unquestioned belief that somehow what exists in the absence of
cormorants is healthier or better, or more correct in some objective and
measurable aspect than what exists in the presence of cormorants, particularly
if that presence results in any loss of vegetation or fewer numbers of other
wildlife species, be they fish or fowl.
In fact the loss need not be
demonstrated in order for concerns about what cormorants will do, or may do, to
flourish, but an overwhelming amount of tax money is being spent in many
jurisdictions to find any such losses.
The word “impact” occurs in the titles of a large numbers of studies
about cormorants, but not the other way around.
Cormorants would appear to be impactors, always; impactees, never.
The difference in the bias I
detect against cormorants and the earlier bias that was manifested by
like-minded people and agencies against hawks and owls derives, I think, in
part because the impact of hawks and owls is more a matter of extrapolation,
than it is a visible phenomenon.
For example, the shooters who
picked off Sharp-shinned Hawks, Peregrine Falcons and other raptors at specific
migration points in Miner’s day knew that if they shot 100 Sharp-shinned Hawks,
they could figure that if each hawk ate, say, one small songbird a day on
average, and that if the average life span of each hawk was as little as two
years, that would equal 73,000 lovely little warblers, wrens, vireos,
flycatchers, thrushes and so on, saved from death. If we calculate an average songbird weight of
only 35 grams each, it works out to 2,500 kilograms, or 55,116 pounds, or 25
metric tons of lovely little birds who are our friends and many species of
which are, in fact, in decline, a few being endangered.
But those folks would not
actually have seen much predation by the hawks, although they would certainly
see some. Cormorants, in comparison, are
very conspicuous and their predation is quite visible.
When my friend, Julie
Woodyer, wrote about how studies show cormorants eat few “desirable” fish
species, a critic complained that cormorants are opportunistic feeders who
can’t distinguish between a common and a “desirable” fish species. Right, and those Sharp-shinned Hawks can’t
distinguish between a common Song Sparrow or an endangered Henslow’s Sparrow.
Of course we now have a
better understanding of how prey population sizes determine predator population
sizes, not the other way around. Apart
from such contrived situations as fish hatcheries, or relatively discrete or
isolated populations of fish subjected to predation by migrant cormorants who
can move on, it does not matter what cormorants eat, the eating itself
indicates that there are a lot of them, whatever the species. In spite of all the Sharp-shinned and other
hawks not being shot there are still billions of songbirds in the province, and
the largest numbers are the commonest species which are therefore the ones most
likely to be caught by any given hawk, even though a Sharp-shinned Hawk does,
like a cormorant, fail to distinguish between rare and common species of prey.
A cormorant colony that
reduces its prey base below the point of diminishing returns – that point where
energy expanded in pursuit of prey exceeds energy derived from the prey – would
fail, for the reasons Mr. Snyder and others so clearly explained when I was a
child. And surviving fish would
reproduce and thus repopulate far more quickly than would surviving cormorants.
But the
Wildlife management agencies love
to resort to the bromide, “agricultural subsidy” to assist in the vilification
of native wildlife that dares to become abundant. In the case of cormorants, the argument is
that the relatively recent growth of fish farms in the Gulf of Mexico coast
wintering range of the Double-crested Cormorant (and I have seen argued in a
paper published in Michigan that we should include an increase in man-made ponds,
and impoundments that replicate prairie slough conditions in eastern North
America) has greatly enhanced the survival of contemporary cormorants in winter,
the argument goes, thus increasing numbers of birds surviving to breeding age
beyond what would occur in pre-industrial North America.
While I find it hard to
believe that the vast and well documented degradation of the wetland and
coastal environment in the wintering range of cormorants since colonial times
would not destroy more fish biomass than is compensated for by the advent of
aquaculture in the southeastern U.S., and fish ponds elsewhere, neither
contention can be proved, one way or the other.
And certainly we can’t expect the wildlife managers to even make the
effort.
And I believe that the
inclination among the wildlife managers is to sway in whatever direction paints
the species in the worst light.
However, as Wires and
Cuthbert have shown, there were records of far greater numbers of
Double-crested Cormorants than occur now, prior to the recent huge expansion of
the fish-farm industry in the southern
Flocks of these magnitudes
have long since disappeared, but the question arises of how they existed in the
absence of the aquaculture and fish ponds and impoundments now deemed by
wildlife managers to be essential in supporting current, smaller numbers of the
same species? There is no record of
nesting colonies that would have accommodated such large numbers of cormorants,
and yet they were there, and subsequently greatly reduced in number in advance
of competent chroniclers recording them on their breeding grounds. That is exactly the scenario that now seems
to apply to the
I don’t have time to address
the topic of dealing with the problem of cormorant predation and aquaculture in
the southern U.S. more effectively than killing the birds at the breeding end
of their migration routes, except to say I believe there are tried and proven economically
viable alternative options open to aquaculturists. Here I just want to emphasize that this is a
native bird living, as it were, within its means in the
That brings us to the second
popular argument made in trying to demonstrate that there are too many
Double-crested Cormorants in the
Most government wildlife
management agencies essentially pay lip service to the idea that when
“renewable resources” are “harvested”, it must be done sustainably. Obviously if one has to continually replenish
natural stocks of native fish from hatcheries, the fishery is not
sustainable. “Harvest” does not merely
involve the “surplus”, which I would define simply as that number of fish that
can be removed without reducing the ability of the species to replenish itself,
an idea similar to the old “total allowable catch”.
One also hears, as a general
principal of good stewardship of the environment, that non-native species
should not be introduced into the environment.
Most wildlife agencies happily introduce all manner of non-native
species. Some of those species, such as
the Coho Salmon, potentially have massive negative impacts on native
species.
What determines what is a
“good” fish seems not to be based on whether or not it is native. Therefore, for example, apart from the
genetically discrete population found in
It is not that I think all
introductions of truly “alien” species create problems. The introduction of those frogs to
But the only criteria the
Ministry of Natural Resources seems to apply to the introduction of non-native
species is the question of whether or not it is desired by the Ontario
Federation of Anglers and Hunters.
Thus we have the bizarre
situation whereby everyone agrees, I think, that Alewives are an alien fish
species displacing at least some native species, and Round Gobies are not only
alien, but markedly deleterious to at least some native fish species, and yet
the Ministry seeks to reduce numbers of their significant predator, the
Double-crested Cormorant. And at their
annual meeting in 2006 David Ramsay told the Ontario Federation of Anglers and
Hunters that Round Gobies have “no natural predators”. Either he does not know what cormorants eat,
or considers cormorants to be unnatural.
I would hope someone would educate him as required, if that is possible.
I believe that we have, with
both intentional and accidental introductions of alien aquatic species, plus
habitat alteration and pollution, so compromised the nature of aquatic species
composition and distribution in the
But we can say that with
regard to native fish, populations must decline, as native fish are not only
forced to deal with the effects of such unintended introductions as Red Mysid
Shrimp, Sea Lamprey and Zebra Mussels, but also such intentionally introduced
species as the Chinook Salmon, the Rainbow Trout, the Brown Trout and the Coho
Salmon, as well as hybrid trout, plus numerous bait species whose appearances
are predictable…all species that did not, unlike our cormorants, co-evolve with
native fish species.
And yet our Ministry of
Natural Resources promotes many of them while denigrating cormorants.
Thus it is not “alienness”
that is the problem, it would appear, except selectively. The fact that cormorants eat Alewives, an
alien species, is not necessarily what the Ontario Federation of Anglers and
Hunters, thus the Ministry of Natural Resources, wants. That is because Alewives feed another alien
species, the Coho Salmon, and Coho Salmon, while alien and damaging to native
species, are still “good” fish because anglers want to catch them, and they
generate profits That being the view,
Alewives are “good” because they feed Cohos, and cormorants become “bad” and must
be reduced, accordingly, because they eat Alewives. And of course to make sure that it is
realized that they are bad birds, cormorants are called invasive.
In defense of various
consumptive wildlife uses, such as hunting, trapping and fishing, we invariably
are told that it helps the health of the species to reduce stresses in the
population by removing individuals; otherwise there will be more disease.
Surely Viral Hemorrhagic
Septicemia qualifies as at least potentially the sort of problem that occurs in
animal populations under stress from over-population, and surely infected fish
would, on average, be selected by natural predators, such as cormorants. It is not that I am saying cormorants, left
alone, would reduce the disease – I don’t know if they would or not – but that
such considerations are not even entertained.
When I wrote to the Minister to ask him if the importance of cormorant
predation in controlling fish diseases was being investigated, the answer was,
“no”; the role of the cormorant in controlling fish disease is not of interest.
The Minister must utter no word, it
seems, or the Ministry conduct any study, that challenges antagonism toward
cormorants.
Regarding changes in fish
species composition in the
But the social reality is
that it is as if the Double-crested Cormorant were not merely alien in the
sense of originating elsewhere, but alien in the sense of not being a part of
nature; a supernatural being whose presence is a “crisis” according to the
Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters.
The same organization calls people like me, “animal rights extremists”
who don’t understand wildlife management, but what is extreme in our position
if it reflects what we all know about ecology and predator prey relationships,
and if not, where is our reasoning incorrect?
About the closest to an
answer to such questions I have encountered comes from two sources. Once I overheard my long time friend, Chip
Weseloh, of the Canadian Wildlife Service, say to another long time friend, Liz
White, of Animal Alliance of Canada, and I paraphrase: “You wouldn’t want
The other insight came from another
informal remark, this one made by MNR fishery biologist Mark Ridgeway, when in
response to my question he said words to the effect that yes, there were many
different factors influencing the size of populations of fish, but apart from
reducing cormorant numbers, changing those other factors was simply not easily politically
or financially viable. The one sacrifice
society will most easily accept to enhance fish stocks is to remove cormorants,
especially if they believe they don’t belong there in the first place.
Although I do feel
frustrated, I don’t think the position of Cormorant Defenders International is
any different from that of an earlier generation or people who, depending on
facts and expertise, but fighting against identical attitudes, worked to change
public opinion and government policy about birds of prey. The likes of the widely admired Jack Miner
notwithstanding, they ultimately achieved legislated success with the
Change is the only constant,
whether we are talking about changes caused by wildlife and climate on a given
environment; changes that occur to us through our lives; or changes in societal
values, perceptions and attitudes.
In the East Sister Island
Preliminary Plan the Minister of Natural Resources stated that the primary
purpose of the EBR is “to protect, conserve and, where reasonable, restore the
integrity of the environment,” with something called the Minister's Statement
of Environmental Values, or SEV. As the
Minister states, “From the MNR’s perspective, the broad statement of purpose
translates into four objectives in its SEV."
I am short of time so will
just deal with two of those objectives:
Number one reads “to ensure the long-term health of ecosystems by
protecting and conserving our valuable soil, aquatic resources, forest and
wildlife resources, as well as their biological foundations.”
But what does this objective
mean? Over the last ten or eleven
thousand years the
Objective 4 reads, “to
protect human life, the resource base and physical property from the threats of
forest fires, floods and erosions.”
Leaving out the functions of naturally occurring fires and floods in,
for example, maintaining natural oak savannahs and floodplains respectively, is
it even possible to protect the physical property and resource base from
erosion? Erosion is natural and
inevitable. Erosion can create or
maintain many habitats. Without flooding
and erosion the very features that define our “natural” environment, from
ravines to floodplains to delta marshes, to bluffs and oxbow lakes, simply
would not exist. The laws of physics
would have to be suspended to create such a situation, where erosion does not
occur.
Again, we request, or would
if we could get past his biases, that the Minister stop using this objective to
manage cormorants, as the Presqu’ile Provincial Park staff attempted to argue
that cormorants were causing the erosion of High Bluff Island, or even the
man-made Leslie-Street Spit, with, no doubt, similar concerns waiting in the
wings to be applied to the Lake Erie islands.
There is a German word, zeitgeist,
that can be defined as: The spirit of the
time; the general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular
period of time.
It means that a widely held
value or attitude or view that may seem radical at one period in time, may seem
reasonable later on. The path the
zeitgeist takes, through time, is not evenly paced, and not without setbacks
and sidetracks, but it generally follows time’s arrow in a specific direction
we think of as being progressive. Things
that were taken for granted in one part of history become unthinkable in
another. Thus Abraham Lincoln may have
seemed radical to his era, for wanting to end slavery, but would seem like a
racist redneck to us in the 21st century, because of his belief that
people of colour should never be allowed to vote, or hold public office. Of course, had Lincoln lived in the 21st
century he almost certainly would not hold such views, because while they were
characteristic of the zeitgeist of his time, the zeitgeist moves on, and those
views of Lincoln simply don’t fit progressive views in our time and he was
progressive in his thinking.
The zeitgeist has moved a
great deal during my lifetime, as it refers to our understanding of nature and
ecology. We don’t shoot Sharp-shinned
Hawks, most of us, and we have the backing of the law that it is wrong to do
so. That is not to say that we won’t
have to fight other battles on behalf of such birds again, and that is not to
say that the Miner Kingsville Sanctuary was not continuing to kill hawks
decades after Jack’s death, with the Ministry of Natural Resources turning a
blind eye.
I started by telling you that
this would be a personal discussion of my views; why I seem to be at odds
against so many people who think there are too many cormorants. In the time allowed I’ve tried to explain
that I have sincerely examined their views, and come to the conclusion that in
balance, and notwithstanding that cormorants, like so many other wildlife
species, do in fact make measurable changes in the environments they inhabit, they
no more deserve the fears and hatreds directed against them than have many
other wildlife species that have similarly been targeted in similar fashion in
earlier times. I have concluded that the
general public has simply been lied to by the government whose role, I would
have hoped, would have been more to educate the public, than to perpetuate the
public’s inflated fears. If my
colleagues and I didn’t care we would have done nothing. And I guess what it is that people choose to
care about, and so act upon, will always be a very personal, necessarily
subjective choice. I care when people
who had the benefits of scientific training I lack use them to perpetuate a
distorted view of nature. Grains of
truth have been morphed into mountains of exaggeration and vilification, and I
cannot see how that serves the better interest of the environment, or the
public.
It takes effort – it always
takes effort – to push against the inertia of the social norm even when
emerging evidence indicates the validity of doing so. But the zeitgeist will continue to move
on. Its forward advancement, setbacks
and sideslips notwithstanding, will always be driven not by any one new datum
or discovery, or by any one person or event or campaign, but as a result of the
accumulative effect of all such data, people, events and campaigns. That is why Cormorant Defenders International
exists, and why as long as cormorants are persecuted, we won’t go away.
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* Snyder, L.L., The Hawks and Owls of
** Lovegrove, Roger. Silent Fields: The Long Decline of a Nation’s
Wildlife.
*** Peterson, Roger Tory, Wildlife in Color,
Houghton Mifflin Company.
**** Wires, Linda A., and
Francesca J. Cuthbert, Historic Populations of the Double-crested
Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus): Implications for Conservation and
Management in the 21st Century, Waterbirds 29(1): 9-37, 2006.
*****Herbert, Craig E., Jason
Duffe, D.V. Chip Weseloh, E.M. Ted Senese and G. Douglas Haffner, Unique Island
Habitats May be Threatened by Double-crested Cormorants; Journal of Wildlife
Management 69(1):68-7; 2005.