A coalition of four animal-protection and conservation groups, including The HSUS, and several private citizens have sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the federal government's recent decision to allow the unlimited killing of double-crested cormorants in 24 states.

The coalition's lawsuit, filed on February 5 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that the cormorant-killing plan violates the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The USFWS announced its final rule in October 2003, calling for the expanded lethal control of cormorants, a migratory species that is blamed for overeating fish populations valuable to sport and commercial anglers.

"The scientific evidence clearly indicates that double-crested cormorants are, by and large, not responsible for declining sport-fish populations. Those declines are due to factors such as habitat degradation and over-fishing," said Bette Stallman, HSUS wildlife scientist. "Aside from that evidence, researchers in the United States and abroad are also making great strides in developing effective means of minimizing cormorant damage at aquaculture facilities. There is simply no justification for large-scale lethal control."

But fans of the plan, such as Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), say that cormorants have earned their death sentence. "What these birds do is eat two to three times their weight of fish in a day," he said. "They're a big nuisance."

Twin Paths of Destruction

The plan has two main components. First, to appease fish farmers in 13 states, the USFWS has expanded the 1998 "depredation order" to allow USDA's Wildlife Services to conduct "winter roost control." This would allow the federal government, for the first time ever, to kill cormorants at their winter nesting sites, even though these roosts may be miles from any fish farm. Wildlife Services agents won't even be required to try non-lethal methods first. They can immediately begin shooting and breaking the necks of birds.

The second component is a "public resource depredation order." This order would allow state agencies, Native American tribes, and USDA's Wildlife Services to kill an unlimited number of federally protected double-crested cormorants in 24 states at any time and in any place—without notifying the USFWS and without proof that the birds have caused any local harm. The order is designed to kill cormorants thought to be damaging commercially valuable fish populations or other "public resources" (e.g., the trees in which cormorants sometimes nest).

"Under this plan," Stallman noted, "cormorants could be killed on natural ponds, rivers, and lakes, where the birds are doing nothing more blameworthy than simply behaving as fish-eating birds have behaved for millions of years."

Already 45,000 cormorants are killed every year. Much of that lethal control has occurred at aquaculture facilities and fish hatcheries in the aforementioned 13 states. The 1998 depredation order allowed lethal cormorant control at aquaculture facilities in those states without a permit. (Outside of those states, the USFWS had issued depredation permits on a case-by-case basis for hatcheries and aquaculture facilities.)

The new plan expands greatly on those previous powers. But in calling for this protection of fish, the USFWS ignores a simple, undeniable fact: Whatever impacts cormorants have on fish (or on other birds or vegetation), they have had the same impacts for millennia. The government is trying to control against normal, natural ecosystem interactions.

What's more, from a legal standpoint, the USFWS and the USDA are violating the MBTA by allowing the lethal control of cormorants without any justification and without any oversight or management by the agencies themselves, the plaintiffs argue in the lawsuit. With regard to NEPA, the environmental documentation drafted and issued by the two agencies was inadequate in scope, failed to provide any underlying scientific justification for the killings, and ignored the comments submitted by interested parties, thereby violating the requirements of act.

Finally, the plaintiffs allege that the USFWS and the USDA violate the ESA in two different ways: First, the USFWS and the USDA did not consult the responsible agency to determine whether the plan would affect threatened and endangered animals (and if so, determine ways to mitigate the effects). Second, the plan places endangered and threatened birds species in jeopardy—including the bald eagle, piping plover, interior least tern, and wood stork—because these species nest near cormorant roosts. The Real Causes of Freshwater Fish Declines

Some people blame double-crested cormorants—large fish-eating water birds native to North America—for declining freshwater fish populations, even though research indicates that overfishing, pollution, and competition by non-native fish are the real causes of these declines.

Scientific evidence indicates that double-crested cormorants generally have no serious impact on fish populations valued by sport and commercial anglers, except in localized cases or in artificial situations. Fish populations are affected by a complex set of factors, of which cormorant predation is just one. Cormorants and other fish-eating birds may impact fish populations in highly contrived situations, such as lakes or rivers that are intensively managed, or where fish populations are already declining for other reasons.

Instead of scapegoating cormorants, The USFWS should address the human causes of declining wild-fish populations (such as overfishing, pollution, and competition with stocked non-native fish). Killing cormorants is, at best, a short-term fix to a problem that requires a long-term solution.

At aquaculture facilities and hatcheries, where artificial conditions make fish more vulnerable to avian predators, cormorant damage can be effectively minimized by using largely non-lethal means. These methods include bird barriers over fish ponds, changes in facility design or management, changes in fish-release techniques at hatcheries, and scare tactics.

Other countries have successfully employed non-lethal—or primarily non-lethal—strategies to reduce the effects of fish-eating birds on fish farms. In Israel, for example, the closely related great cormorant causes similar conflicts at fish farms. But Israelis have come to rely almost entirely—and with success—on innovative non-lethal means to protect fish. Likewise, researchers in Hong Kong recently examined the effectiveness of installing wire over fish farm ponds and found that this method reduced cormorant visits by more than 98%.

Conversely, there's evidence that increased lethal control of cormorants—or even the current level of lethal control—will not alleviate problems at fish farms. Shooting cormorants at one fish farm may simply cause the birds to move to another farm.

"The USFWS should adopt a policy in which only non-lethal management techniques are employed," said The HSUS's Stallman. "If lethal control of cormorants is allowed at all on fish farms, it should only be used infrequently and in limited circumstances, targeted at the specific birds causing the problem, as a way to reinforce non-lethal harassment techniques."

The Overpopulation Myth

Cormorants are not overpopulated. Though their populations have increased greatly in some regions over the past two decades, this increase is, in part, a population recovery after a long history of persecution by humans as well as exposure to contaminants such as DDT. Their recovery means that we must learn to live with them, not return them to the low population sizes of the recent past.

In addition, little is known about how a cormorant population would respond to a serious reduction or elimination of a local population, which is allowed under the plan. Such a reduction may result in a rapid population rebound via increased reproduction by surviving birds and/or a rapid influx of cormorants from another nearby population—meaning no long-term effect on the overall population size, but suffering on the part of the birds who are killed. Alternatively, cormorants may not be able to recover from such a decline locally, and may require expensive and time-consuming protections in the future.

The USFWS has acknowledged that, under this plan, local cormorant populations in some areas may be greatly reduced or even wiped out, but it doesn't consider this a problem. The USFWS and USDA seem content to continue caving in to demands for more lethal control of an unfairly vilified species (wolves and grizzlies are other shining examples) until the eradication becomes so widespread that the species then requires Endangered Species Act protection.

With the cormorant plan, the federal government is turning its sights from mammals to fish-eating birds, and the implications are disturbing.