Wisconsin - Cormorant culling under way in Green Bay

[GLF]

Green Bay (AP) -- Sharpshooters are starting to kill some double-crested cormorants on selected islands in Green Bay now that the large fish-eating birds have rebounded after being virtually wiped out during the 1970s. The effort to shoot about 900 cormorants started last week to control the growing population and to provide bird carcasses for research.

Government crews are also planning to coat the birds' eggs with corn oil to prevent hatching at nearly 6,000 nests, nearly half of all the nesting sites in the bay from the city of Green Bay to near Peninsula State Park in Door County.

There are an estimated 12,880 cormorant nests in Green Bay, Wisconsin DNR officials said. Sharpshooter plans call for marksmen under contract from the U.S. Department of Agriculture using shotguns and .22-caliber rifles with silencers to shoot 550 cormorants on Cat Island in the southern end of Green Bay. They are also to shoot 50 cormorants on Jack Island and 300 cormorants on Little Strawberry Island, just west of Peninsula State Park.

Tom Hauge, director of the agency's Bureau of Wildlife Management, emphasized the DNR has no intention of wiping out the bird and is conducting a thorough environmental assessment to guide cormorant management after this year. "We think that cormorants are like some other species in Wisconsin," Hauge said. "At some fundamental level, we have to ask, 'How many cormorants do we really want on the Great Lakes?"

A Great Lakes survey in 1970 found only 89 nests, according to the USFWS, after exposure to DDT nearly wiped out the bird. But making it illegal to kill the cormorant without a permit and banning DDT paved the way for a comeback of the bird, and Gov. Jim Doyle signed legislation last month requiring the DNR to administer a program to control the cormorant population.

[Blue Knight]

When they're done send them up to Ontario please

[CaptLevi]

I wonder if those who are pushing to bring the fish species in our Great Lakes back a more natural state are in favor of wiping out the comorant in Michigan. If I am correct, they are not an indigenous species either.