MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Spring 2019

14 ML BLUE SPRING 2019 GUEST ITORIAL Ever eat cormorant? Apparently, the Province thinks you should. In 2018 the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry proposed a hunting season on the double-breasted cormorant from March 15 to December 31. If this comes to pass, a single hunter could bag up to 50 cormorants per day, with unlimited possession. That’s 1,500 per month, and over 14,000 per season. Now who eats that much crow duck? Almost anyone can quickly recognize this local fishing bird. With ebony breast and orange cheeks, they stand tall and sleek. Often striking a Christ pose with their wings held up to sundry, cormorants are part of the ethos of the ancient Great Lakes. These gregarious diving birds love to loiter and have no problem thriving on Georgian Bay. That is, when the odds aren’t stacked against them. The cormorant ( Phalacrocorax auritus ) was protected under the Migratory Bird and Treaty Act of 1918. By the 1930s, that sentiment had turned to “cull the cormorants”, with control measures introduced that remained in effect for decades, permitting the destruction of eggs at various colonies. Colonies also suffered DDT and PCB poisoning beginning in the 1950s, earning them a listing on the endangered species list. Soon they became the poster-fowl for environmental activists, with their recovery in the late Eighties and early Nineties applauded as an ecosystem health indicator, after most uses of DDT and PCB were banned in the Seventies. Fish-eating birds such as cormorants have historically kindled grievance and bad blood among fish harvesters on the lakes, who feel the fowl leave CORMO-RANT: A CULL WITHOUT REASON The cormorant: key to the Great Lakes balancing act? MAXIME LÉGARÉ-VÉZINA