No need for a cull of cormorants

THERE are too many cormorants on the Columbia River between Washington State and Oregon, say US federal officials. Richard Collins says there's no need for a cull.

They want the army to shoot 11,000 of them and spray their nests with vegetable oil, smothering the embryos inside. The measures are deemed necessary to protect dwindling salmon and trout stocks. Opponents of the proposed cull, including the Portland branch of the Audubon Society, say that the decline in fish numbers is due to habitat destruction water pollution and over-fishing, not cormorants.

The species to be targeted is the double-crested cormorant, the most common of North America’s six species. As the name implies, it has two black and white tufts on the head during the breeding season, vaguely resembling the smaller of our two Irish cormorants, the shag. The American bird, however, lives both on the coast and along rivers, whereas shags don’t venture inland. The shag has only one head-crest and it’s all black.