Fishermen shoot 2,000 cormorants

[Hobjob]

Fishermen shoot 2,000 cormorants - Telegraph

Fishermen shot more than 2,000 cormorants last year after the Government decided to sanction the killing of the so-called "crows of the sea".

From the article that is 10% of the total of cormorants.

When did they start to go inland so much? Is it a new behaviour?

I'm not a fisherman and have no insight into their hobby.

[htcdude]

I'm not exactly old, so I've always known Cormorants to be inland :-) Round London there's good numbers at various lakes & reservoirs, also along the Thames and other rivers. Very sad to hear of the shootings.

[shagbat]

I've been seeing Cormorants for about 36 years around North London.
As the food in their natural (coastal) became depleted, they moved inland.
Here, they found lakes and rivers, artificially and overstocked, so they shoot them.
All the morals of a kid with an air rifle, putting bread out for sparrows!
Incidently, for any Londoners, you can see cormorants eel fishing at Hammersmith.

[Fauna]

Originally Posted by Hobjob

Fishermen shoot 2,000 cormorants - Telegraph

Fishermen shot more than 2,000 cormorants last year after the Government decided to sanction the killing of the so-called "crows of the sea".

From the article that is 10% of the total of cormorants.

When did they start to go inland so much? Is it a new behaviour?

I'm not a fisherman and have no insight into their hobby.

My understading is that Cormorants are both Sea and Fresh water birds. They have always been found inland, but their numbers have been controlled for many many years.?

[Ukwildlifeo]

I'll have to dig out a paper I found on this very subject which stated in a natural setting cormorants and herons have no effect on fish numbers. The problems arise in densely overstocked fish farms and other artifical settings where a cormorant will damage fish around the target fish as it chases it. I diod my senior school work experience ona fish farm near a nature reserve - some of the stuff I saw I wouldn't have stood for, unlike the 15 year old kid I was....

[Meta menardi]

They were present on the farm I worked on 35 years ago, just South of Shrewsbury on the Severn.

[Naturenutz]

There are many on chew valley lake.They have quite an impact on the stocked trout.Many fish are caught with the tell-tale signs of a cormorant strike (a v mark either side of the body).The anglers have often asked for numbers to be reduced .

[Fauna]

Originally Posted by Naturenutz

There are many on chew valley lake.They have quite an impact on the stocked trout.Many fish are caught with the tell-tale signs of a cormorant strike (a v mark either side of the body).The anglers have often asked for numbers to be reduced .

Got this request daily on the water i recently worked on. There where on average about 70 Cormorants working the water. We would let anglers off with the badly marked trout (unless it was a competition).

[bigdave60dog]

As far as I know they don`t shoot them in coastal fishing communities.
It is bast to get the facts straight before anyone goes accusing every angler of killing cormorants.
I believe that they are mainly shot by fishery management agencies inland rather than by "fishermen" who don`t usually carry guns. They shoot the birds to protect there own commercial interests. Some are shot by breeders of fish to sell for release into waters where anglers pay to fish for sport. Some are shot by the owners of these waters.
Some are shot by commercial Salmon and Trout hatcheries and breeders as well as fish farmers who rear the fish for food use.
In all of these industries Cormorants are viewed as vermin by many operatives as are seal in Salmon fish farms, foxes by free range poultry farmers, wood pigeons by cabbage growers and feral pigeons and brown rats by many -including many Wabbers.
I am not saying that I sanction any of this. I believe strongly that all life is of equal value including rats and pigeons. However if an animal is destroying your livelyhood I think that one has a better case for persecuting it than one would an animal or bird that messes up the garden or craps on town buildings and cars.

[RoyW]

Originally Posted by Hobjob

Fishermen shot more than 2,000 cormorants last year after the Government decided to sanction the killing of the so-called "crows of the sea".

This figure will most likely increase each year as those with economic interest in fisheries attempt to prevent the natural exploitation of an available food source by a species that is expanding to take advantage of it.
It is understandable in some ways, and justification for this sort of killing is similar to the reasons for controlling species that are considered "agricultural pests". If inland waters weren't deliberately stocked with fish in the first place they wouldn't be as attractive to Cormorants, and there might not be as many inland, but it's understandable that people want to protect their "investments". To obtain licences to shot Cormorants, fishery owners do first have to show that other methods have been tried and have failed, but as shooting is only a very short term measure (other cormorants will usually come to the site within a few weeks), shooting can only work if it is ongoing.

Of course, not all anglers automatically consider Cormorants to be as bad as some make out, but there does seem to be a lot of anti-Cormorant feeling among them (fueled by the sort of biased, and factually incorrect propaganda that is passed around - for an example do a web search for "Cormorantbusters").

Originally Posted by Hobjob

When did they start to go inland so much? Is it a new behaviour?

Cormorants have been recorded as scarce visitors to inland waters since (at least) the late 1800's, but only tended to be reported inland in very small numbers until the latter half of the 1900's. In the London area, they were virtually unheard of until the 1920's, increased in number slightly during the 1930's, and then started to be recorded in larger numbers from the late 1940's onwards. First recorded breeding in the London area was in 1987, then annually from 1991 - following the first inland breeding in England in Essex in 1981.
In other areas, further inland, I believe that Cormorants have only been recorded in fairly large numbers since about 1970.

Continental race Cormorants have been known to nest in inland colonies for a much longer time, and it is the spread of this race across Europe that is often attributed to the establishment of inland colonies in England (although Cormorants of the established northern European race can also be found in the colonies, and are commonly found inland during the winter). There is also a long established inland colony of Cormorants at 'Bird Rock' in Wales (these ones are the more coastal northern European race, and mainly fly out to the coast to feed).