Sharon Hill, Windsor Star
March 10, 2008
The local humane society has warned Parks Canada that it could face charges under the Criminal Code if a proposed cull of double-crested cormorants on Middle Island is done inhumanely.
John Roushorne, the humane society's executive director, said in past culls of cormorants, the birds have died a "painful, difficult death" because they weren't killed quickly.
He said the society "very strongly expressed" to Parks Canada that an inhumane cull could be considered willful cruelty and neglect and grounds for laying charges. Parks Canada has assured the society this cull will be done differently, he said.
"Parks Canada has reinvented the wheel on cormorant culls here in their view and they believe they can do this without being inhumane. Our job is to watch over them," Roushorne said Monday.
He said the humane society opposes the cull but "we can no more put a stop under the law to culling cormorants than we can to shooting moose."
The society has asked for observer status if a cull is held, he said. The human society's website has been encouraging people to express their objection to a cull to Parks Canada and Minister of the Environment John Baird.
Last week, Parks Canada posted an online notice that an environmental assessment is being done on a management plan that includes April culls of the fish-eating cormorants for five years. An online project description says culls could reduce the cormorant nests on the Lake Erie island from 4,026 to between 438 and 876 by 2012.
Groups opposed to the cull have called it a slaughter.
Stephen Woodley, the chief ecosystem scientist with Parks Canada, said the colony's guano kills trees and vegetation and could wipe out the Carolinian forest in five to 10 years. He said the 18.5-hectare island south of Pelee Island lost 41 per cent of its forest between 1995 and 2006. The island has 33 provincially rare species and nine federal species at risk. Woodley said it is also an important stopover for migrating birds and the monarch butterfly.
Woodley said Parks Canada learned lessons from past culls in Ontario and the United States. He said the weapons will be different and each shot will be more accurate.
"We want to hit 99 times out of a hundred." Male and female breeding adults from a nest would be shot prior to chick hatching. Adults in flight and those with young that had already hatched would not be targeted.
He said trained marksmen will use small-calibre rifles with power scopes and will shoot from fixed locations where they can rest the weapon as they aim.
Any bird that is missed and flies off can be alerted by radios and targeted by shooters in boats. A veterinarian will supervise the cull, Woodley said.
A description of the proposed cull says the shooting will be done in 20-minute intervals to reduce the disruption to other nesting birds. The rifles won't have "silencers" but will have devices to suppress the sound.
Dead birds would be retrieved from the shoreline and for research but most of the carcasses would be left where they fall.
Parks Canada considered but ruled out other ways to reduce the numbers of cormorants, such as harassing the birds with noise, adding predators and oiling eggs. Nest destruction or removal was seen as a method that could be done on a small scale but was seen as labour intensive and difficult since the cormorants nest in trees.