Ohio - Wildlife Officials Fight Aquatic Bird(commorants) Boom

[GLF]

ST. MARYS, Ohio - Biologists alarmed by an explosion of cormorants plan to slaughter 7,200 of the birds in Ohio, including most of the booming colony on an island in the state's largest reservoir.

"It's kind of freaky. They'll come in, and I guess one will go back and talk to their buddies," said Morton Pugh, a hatchery superintendent who has dealt with the birds for years. "So one day you'll have five, the next day 12, then 30. I've had 100 to 200 in a pond."

Cormorants arrived at Grand Lake St. Marys in western Ohio after raiding an Ohio Department of Natural Resources fish farm, where they scooped up walleye, catfish, perch and fathead minnows.

The birds have jammed a lake island with more than 80 nests, up from zero a few years back, and a handful ashore in nearby cottonwood trees. Pugh swears they know when weekends arrive and no workers are around to chase them off.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Division of Wildlife began killing cormorants last month and have culled more than 5,300 from three Lake Erie islands.

Up to 120,000 could die in the Great Lakes region in the first year of an unprecedented attempt to stop the Midwest cormorant population from running wild. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will join Ohio with programs this year, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

In 2003, there were no cormorants on Green Island, an uninhabited 17-acre outcropping in Lake Erie. Today, there are close to 900 nests. Egrets and great blue herons are being evicted, and a stand of environmentally threatened rock elm trees is stressed.

The federal government began protecting the birds in 1972 and soon after outlawed the pesticide DDT, which led to dangerously soft egg shells. In the Great Lakes alone, the cormorant population has rebounded from 89 nests to more than 110,000.

Cormorants can dive and swim, and a full-grown bird eats about a pound of fish a day.

"They're like wolves," said Jim Stafford, who runs six state fish hatcheries. "They fly in and take what they want and they are very good at it. There's nothing we can do."

Mark Shieldcastle, a state biologist who has been making trips to Green Island to shoot the birds with a silencer-equipped .22-caliber weapon since April, said there were only about 80 pairs of cormorants on the Great Lakes in 1970.

"They used to live in this region, but they were pretty much gone by the 1980s," he said. "The numbers stayed down because of DDT and the harm it did to eggs."

[GLF]

FWS & DNR culling Cormorants of Lake Erie

St. Marys population to be thinned out

Cormorants have been devouring fish, officials expect to remove most of them by summer

ST. MARYS | — By summer, Ohio wildlife officials expect to thin out most of a booming colony of cormorants that has taken hold at Grand Lake St. Marys.

Biologists say the population of hooked-beak waterbirds has doubled every five years and the birds are moving into new territory and devouring freshwater fish. In Grand Lake St. Marys, the state's largest reservoir, a tiny island is jammed with more than 80 nests, up from zero a few years back, and a handful ashore in cottonwood trees.

The cormorants raided an Ohio DNR fish farm, and scooped up walleye, catfish, perch and fathead minnows.

"It's kind of freaky. They'll come in, and I guess one will go back and talk to their buddies," said Morton Pugh, a hatchery superintendent who has dealt with the birds for years. "So one day you'll have five, the next day 12, then 30."

The USFWS the state DNR began killing cormorants last month and have culled more than 5,300 from three Lake Erie islands. Ultimately, about 7,200 birds around Ohio will be shot.