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. ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]