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Ontario Cormorant hunt a danger to ecosystems and people
#1
The proposed Cormorant hunt in Ontario is really an open season to drive a species to extinction. The hunting season will be from March 15-Dec 31. Hunters will be allowed to kill 50 birds a day! That comes to 14,550 birds per hunter per year. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/do...-1.5053685

No species can sustain that kind of loss and survive. Cormorants are native to Ontario so they are a natural part of the ecosystem where ever they live. Taking them out of the ecosystem in such high numbers will have consequences.

They also nest and live in areas where there are other birds that will be put at risk. They nest in places where there are human recreation areas. That many hunters put people at  risk. The whole idea is very dangerous. In theory killing so many Cormorants will bring back the fish supplies, but there is no evidence that this is what will happen. Instead, destabilizing the ecology could make many things worse, even the fish supply.

The provincial government is determined to do it. Sadly this is just one more badly thought out idea from  our current provincial government. No government should have the power to drive a species toward extinction.
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Catherine

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#2
How terrible.

Management of the fish supply should surely be the answer to the problem...? And if necessary, running a hatchery for them?
Oh yes of course....but I forgot....that costs money. Getting a whole load of trigger-happy idiots out there shooting at things and mindlessly killing, costs nothing.

You are right, so many Cormorant deaths is eventually going to put the species at risk.
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#3
There are a lot of reasons why the fish are in short supply. When they put in waterways and locks certain species were able to travel up stream into new lakes. Some of the new species eat the eggs and hatchlings of native fish and deplete their numbers.
I think I read of one lake where they stocked it with fish, the wrong kind of fish and that destroyed the population of native fish. 
Cormorants just don't account for the fish decline. Human activities also destroy fish stocks. Even dams and shoreline construction can destroy fish stocks. Cormorants eat some fish, but we kill way more.

The hunt is totally unreasonable. It covers their entire breeding season so there will be orphaned baby birds. Also the extreme numbers that can be killed every day are out of proportion to the number of cormorants that actually exist. The whole thing is unreasonable and cruel.

It is an ecological disaster in the making because we have never studied the impact of  reducing cormorant numbers. For all we know cormorants might be eating a type of fish that is responsible for the decline of fish numbers. If that were true then killing cormorants could cause the fish population to crash.
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Catherine

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