The Ohio Division of Wildlife (apparently the agency most devoted to
the project, on-paper alliances with USF&WS and USDA aside) began
shooting double-crested cormorants off their nests in Ohio in May 2006.
The DOW's first--as far as I know--publication on this effort is now on
line, beginning on page 40 of a document posted at
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Portals/9/pdf/2008WildlifeReport.pdf . Other
less controversial projects are treated in this publication as well, and
are worth reading.
        This report covers the lethal control of cormorants in 2006 and 2007,
and does not include 579 killed at West Sister Island, or as-yet
unpublicized numbers killed at Green and Turning Point Islands, in May
of this year. It is easy to see in Figure 2 that shooting has not
resulted in more egret & heron nests at WSI, and the reported results
elsewhere seem equivocal at best. Figure 2 clearly shows that since the
largest incursion of cormorants on WSI in 1995 there has been *no*
significant change in nesting numbers of any other colonial nester
there--despite the alleged depredations of the cormorants 1995-2005, or
even after recent controls by lethal means 2006-2007.
        The report makes several unwarranted statements: that cormorants never
nested in the Great Lakes prior to the early 1900s, and that they first
received statutory protection in the 1970s. It also ignores documented
nestings in Franklin and Summit counties. But read it for yourself, if
you care that our Ohio wildlife employees seem determined to kill large
numbers of native birds every spring into the indefinite future to
achieve what they regard as a desirable balance of species.
Bill Whan
Columbus

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