If I may interrupt briefly the feeder reports, those planning to attend
the Wildlife Diversity Conference here on this coming Wednesday should
recognize that some of the presentations are highly contested. For
example, what some have represented as the "REAL story" on Ohio
double-crested cormorants is one-sided. Big-time.
        I was reminded this by a thread on BirdChat this afternoon:
http://www.birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CHAT.html , where controversy
continues in Canada about plans to shoot cormorants on their nests at
Ontario's southernmost Island in Lake Erie. This is of course what has
been happening at several spots in Ohio for two years now, and US
proponents have been goading the Canadian authorities as too influenced
by "animal-rights" enthusiasts.  Some Canadian authorities are now
pounding their hairy chests about it now.
        Many Canadians have been opposing these measures, of course. Very few
Ohioans have done so, I am sorry to say. Folks attending the Conference
are welcome to accept it, but don't count on anything but the party line
from presenters. If you want to be better informed, I suggest the
following readings on the Web:
        1. The accepted proposal to "lethally control" cormorants in Ohio,
though written by its proponents, is so flawed as to constitute an
indictment all by itself: see
http://www.fws.gov/midwest/MidwestBird/cormorants.htm
        2. The American Ornithologists' Union has issued a scientific critique
of this and other cormorant-control programs at
http://www.aou.org/committees/conservation.php3  .
        3. The Wires & Cuthbert paper at
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-toc&issn=1524-4695&volume=29&issue=1&ct=1&SESSID=a5d92a73a5b14a79d1766bd7e3196529
offers a scholarly opinion on the historical abundance of cormorants in
the region far different from that the DOW offers.
        4. Since the arrival of double-crested cormorants there, no significant
reduction had been noted in the nesting numbers of other
colonial-nesting birds at West Sister Island, despite what you may hear
at the conference (ask to see the charts). Invasions of southern herons
and egrets have been a phenomenon of only the past few decades, but
cormorants have a longer history in Ohio. Populations of herons and
egrets at WSI fluctuated wildly in the fairly recent past, especially
during the period when cormorants were absent, having been extirpated in
the region by DDT. Cormorants and egrets and herons have co-existed at
N. American nesting colonies for thousands of years. Nature is more
complex than some may want it to appear, especially those who have the
temerity to think they can successfully "manage" it.
Bill Whan
Columbus

p.s. Conference attendees might also want to listen with equal
skepticism to another presentation from USDA's Wildlife Services (until
recently "Wildlife Damage Control", and the 'lead agency' in the
cormorant lethal controls) asserting that black vultures may need to be
"controlled" to prevent depredations on livestock.






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