Barry Kent MacKay,
BornFreeUSA.org
December 2018
This move is a response to lobbying by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH), who must now abandon any pretense that hunting isn’t cruel and wasteful.
Pair of cormorants in flight. Drawing by Barry Kent MacKay / Born Free USA.
See more of Barry's art -
Art by Barry Kent MacKay.
To oppose this monstrous legislation,
GO HERE TO LEAVE A COMMENT.
Deadline for comment is January 3, 2019.
Ontario’s newly elected premier, Doug Ford, in many ways as Trumpian as
the Donald himself, has just proposed what is, I believe, the worst single
wild game management decision in Canadian history. Did I say “game”? “Gamey”
barely describes the essentially inedible double-crested cormorant, a
species that was twice nearly wiped out in Ontario, and is not “game” by any
traditional definition. And yet, so it is to be called, except that for the
first time since game laws came into being, it will be legal to leave the
carcasses of birds who have been shot as “game” to rot. The bag limit is 50
per day with no limit to possession. The season will be from March 15, the
start of the cornmorant nesting season, to December 31, when all but a few
stragglers have migrated south.
Ford’s government is a majority (which is like having control of both the
House and Senate in U.S. politics), so there can be no effective opposition,
and Ford’s term is four years. I doubt he’ll be re-elected, but it will take
further years to undo damage he’s doing in this and other similarly
Draconian legislation. I hate to think what’s to come.
This move is a response to lobbying by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and
Hunters (OFAH), who must now abandon any pretense that hunting isn’t cruel
and wasteful. “Hunting” has to be redefined, literally, with the Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Act being amended so hunters can allow the meat of
“game” to spoil. The birds are easily shot and highly vulnerable. There is
no “fair chase” or “sustainable use” involved.
Born unfeathered, so ugly only a mother can love them, which she, and
dad, do, protecting them from the elements. Drawing by Barry Kent MacKay /
Born Free USA. See more of Barry's art - Art by Barry Kent MacKay.
Cormorants nest in colonies of mixed bird species. Both parents need to
tend the young, born naked. Would it not be deemed cruel to put a baby bird
in the oven, turn the temperature to 90 or more Fahrenheit and leave it to
die? That degree of abuse will be the fate of who knows how many hundreds,
or thousands of baby cormorants, whose parents tend them with such great
care – feeding them, shading them, warming them, and even bringing them
water to cool them in the heat of the day.
Ford (brother to Toronto’s late crack-smoking Mayor Rob Ford) is not the
sharpest knife in the drawer and probably bought into the much-debunked
belief that fish consumed by cormorants would otherwise be available to
commercial and sport fishing interests. A search of peer-reviewed scientific
literature by ornithologists showed otherwise, but facts don’t matter to
authoritarian right-wingers. Natural predation is usually “compensatory,”
taking individual prey that would otherwise not survive, and only under
exceptional circumstances is predation “additive,” meaning that it is above
the number needed for the prey species numbers to continue. If this were not
the case, all predators would wipe out their prey and go extinct. As The
Department of Natural Resources for Minnesota puts it, compensatory
mortality “…is common in all animal populations and this type of mortality
[by cormorants] does not decrease fish populations.”
This is all too technical for Ford and OFAH, but even if they did understand
such basic ecology, I doubt they would care. Numbers of hunters are in
freefall decline, if “hunting” is defined in terms of science-based
regulation, “fair chase” and utilization. The term has shifted to simply
mean killing. The fact that cormorant guano, rich in nutriments, can kill
off trees, plus the absurd belief that fish eaten by cormorants would
otherwise wind up on hooks, in nets and creels, or glued to wooden plaques
hung on walls, is all the excuses needed. With slob hunters now legitimized
by Mr. Ford, watch, too, for killing of loons and other birds that dare to
eat fish and are easily mistaken for cormorants.
To oppose this monstrous legislation,
GO HERE TO LEAVE A COMMENT.
Deadline for comment is January 3, 2019.
Return to Fishes