Cormorant cull cost draws fire

Sharon Hill, Windsor Star

May 1, 2009

Last year's cormorant cull of 211 birds on Middle Island cost $130,000.

"That's $616 per bird that they killed," said Liz White, a spokeswoman for Cormorant Defenders International which tried to stop the cull last year.

Divided by the two half days and one full day of shooting last year, White figured it cost taxpayers $65,000 a day.

"I suspect a lot of people would say what the hell are you spending the money for? It's an island in the middle of the lake."

She said the culling doesn't make sense since the water birds will only come back to the uninhabited Lake Erie island. The $130,000 cost for the first year of a five-year management plan includes operational costs from equipment to research, but not wages, said Point Pelee National Park superintendent Marian Stranak.

The park manages Middle Island.

Stranak said the cost of the cull and other activities such as removing nests is far less than the millions of dollars it would cost taxpayers for restoration work if habitat and rare species were lost.

The cormorants' guano is killing trees and vegetation. Between 1995 and 2006, a study showed that 41 per cent of the island's forest had been lost and if that trend continued, the forest would be gone in a decade, Stranak said.

"We have a chance to act now and save the species at risk and the island." The species at risk, which the park is legally required to protect, include the endangered Lake Erie water snake and red mulberry tree, five threatened species and two species of special concern.

The five-year budget for the management plan at Middle Island is $380,000. Stranak said she didn't know how much this year's cull, which has taken 752 birds, will cost.

Last year, fewer adult nesting birds were killed because the park was testing procedures and the cull started late after an unsuccessful legal challenge by groups that belong to Cormorant Defenders International.

752 KILLED

By Thursday, 752 cormorants had been killed in a cull that started April 18.

A group watching the cormorant cull from a boat off Middle Island says it's concerned about wounded birds and the disturbance to other nesting birds.

Liz White, a spokeswoman for Cormorant Defenders International, said she saw two dead cormorants and one injured bird Wednesday in the water off the south side of the island and alerted Parks Canada officials. White said she's concerned Parks Canada isn't getting to injured birds to make sure they die as quickly as possible after being shot. Marian Stranak, superintendent of Point Pelee National Park which manages the island, said the park has a legal obligation to protect species at risk and can't postpone action.

"It's about saving a dying island," Stranak said.

She couldn't comment on the birds White said she saw but Stranak said the protocols being used to retrieve and kill wounded birds are working.

"There have been very, very few birds that landed in the water."

Over five years, Parks Canada wants to reduce the number of cormorant nests from about 5,000 to between 600 and 1,100 nests, Stranak said. The park needs to cull several thousand birds before mid-May, she said.