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Government sanctions cormorant cull to appease anglers (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Chris Monk
- Start date
Let's get this right. People have messed nature about (overfishing etc) so what's the solution.... i know, let's find a scapegoat and kill it (Ruddy Duck, Cormorant whatever).
Why is the only solution that we ever come up with..kill it?
I can see the need for protecting fish stocks but there must be a better way, preferably one that will work.
Nick
Why is the only solution that we ever come up with..kill it?
I can see the need for protecting fish stocks but there must be a better way, preferably one that will work.
Nick
Blackstart
Saxophonus pinus
David Bryant said:
Ahem. Bird-eating fish?
Edward woodwood
Member
any evidence for the 'suggestion' (I'm not going to call it a fact yet!) that Cormorants are more numerous because of over fishing in North Sea?
remember Cormorants were once common inland before large scale commercial fishing when there would have been an ample supply of fish.
Any references to this research anywhere available?
remember Cormorants were once common inland before large scale commercial fishing when there would have been an ample supply of fish.
Any references to this research anywhere available?
jurek
Well-known member
In Poland, we also had birder-fisher war over cormorants. The war is over. Cormorants can be shot at commercial fishponds, but fishpond owners soon realised that this makes no sense (count the cost of shooting!) and scare cormorants away. I wonder if British profit from the experience abroad?
Cormorants are best combated by scaring them away from feeding sites (often with automatic cannons, also with shooting - but it is more scaring than killing) and by preventing any new nesting colonies.
Funny, shooting and chasing established nest colonies had reverse effect. These reach a plateau because there is a limited area to which birds can fly to feed. Chased away, cormorants make several new small colonies which increase quickly. This way people sometimes INCREASED cormorant population twofold in a ten years. This can be a good advice - except I see no need of more cormorant.
Cormorants are best combated by scaring them away from feeding sites (often with automatic cannons, also with shooting - but it is more scaring than killing) and by preventing any new nesting colonies.
Funny, shooting and chasing established nest colonies had reverse effect. These reach a plateau because there is a limited area to which birds can fly to feed. Chased away, cormorants make several new small colonies which increase quickly. This way people sometimes INCREASED cormorant population twofold in a ten years. This can be a good advice - except I see no need of more cormorant.
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Vectis Birder
Itchy feet
Why have the Cormorants become a big problem? Why have they moved inland to the lakes and reservoirs, etc? Is it because of human over-fishing of waters at the coast? I admit I know very little about this, so hence the questions.Tim Allwood said:
Having just taken a peek at that "Songbird Survival" site, I agree with your first sentence Tim. Why are they blaming Sparrowhawks while almost completely exonerating cats? Cats do a lot of damage to birds.
As for Cormorants this "Songbird Survival Group" accuse them of being "greedy". FFS they are "only" birds - I am pretty certain that birds and other animals don't have the same concept of greed as we do. As I have said before attributing human thought patterns and sense of what is wrong or right to birds and other animals is pointless and wrong.
"Why have the Cormorants become a big problem? Why have they moved inland to the lakes and reservoirs, etc? Is it because of human over-fishing of waters at the coast? I admit I know very little about this, so hence the questions."
What's happened is that the coastal Cormorants have pretty much stayed where they are but an ongoing expansion of continental birds (different subspecies) that prefer fresh water have expanded into Britain.
'Songbid Survival' would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that some innocent people view their ideas uncritically and buy into the nonsense they peddle. It is a bit disturbing that the BBC seem to be using them as a 'source'.
Dave
What's happened is that the coastal Cormorants have pretty much stayed where they are but an ongoing expansion of continental birds (different subspecies) that prefer fresh water have expanded into Britain.
'Songbid Survival' would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that some innocent people view their ideas uncritically and buy into the nonsense they peddle. It is a bit disturbing that the BBC seem to be using them as a 'source'.
Dave
Nightranger
Senior Moment
Tim Allwood said:
Hi Tim,
I am not getting too involved with this debate because I suspect it would set me up as an easy target but just a few points for everyone to think over. The UK inland birds have been proved to be continental sinensis birds because they were DNA tested by my old uni mate Stuart Piertney. If you Google using Stuart's name and cormorants, you should find a reference to the paper.
I think the one think that is alarming about this issue is that it could enourage fisheries to shoot birds rather than use deterrents. 3,000 birds is a considerable number (20% of the UK population) given the total UK population and if it is met every year then we are looking at a potential extinction of UK cormorants, although it will probably not come to that.
The biggest question is "who is going to oversee this?" and are we going to see people shooting coastal birds and heaven forbid, shags by accident. The other point is - where will it end? Virtually everyone with an interest could claim the same thing for ospreys, harriers, hawks, divers, sawbills or even grebes.
I do not want to say anything more on this subject but it would bear thinking about these points.
Ian
alan_rymer
Well-known member
Quote from post No 1
6. Between 1996/97 and 2001/02, between 366 and 545 individual
licences were issued per annum by Defra. The most birds shot in any
one year was 225 (in 2001/02), demonstrating that not all licences are
carried out.
Each Licence is for up to 10 birds!. So licenses have already been issued to remove up to 5450 in each year between 1996 and 2002, but the most birds "recorded" shot in and one year was 225.
What has really changed?.
------------------------
On the Radio 4 Today program it was reported to that the cull was aginst the governments own findings
Quote "This snap decision by the minister ignores the advice of his own scientists ", I seem to remember that the Today program also said that the advice was from a report in the early 90's.
The population has increased since then.
And lets get the Race of Cormorants involved right, It is Sinensis as stated in a previous post. This race has respread from the inland waterways of Asia and Europe to the U.K. Just like humans, when the population in an area gets too large they emmigrate and live off the available resources elswhere. Lack of food in the sea is not the reason for the recent explosion of the Sinensis population. What other fish eating bird has increased inland to this extent?. The Carbo race tend to stick to a saltwater diet.
It is dificult to tell exactly how many fish a Cormorant will eat per day,( its generally accepted that its about 450 grams weight ).
But unless you dig a big hole, fill it with water, put in X number of fish. Leave it a year then drain it and count the fish again, you cannot say exactly what the damage is. But when you see up to fifty birds on a lake every day its easy to do the maths.
Quote" There must be a better way than to shoot them"!.
I agree!.
Personally I think they should be deported back to their country of origin as economic migrants.
6. Between 1996/97 and 2001/02, between 366 and 545 individual
licences were issued per annum by Defra. The most birds shot in any
one year was 225 (in 2001/02), demonstrating that not all licences are
carried out.
Each Licence is for up to 10 birds!. So licenses have already been issued to remove up to 5450 in each year between 1996 and 2002, but the most birds "recorded" shot in and one year was 225.
What has really changed?.
------------------------
On the Radio 4 Today program it was reported to that the cull was aginst the governments own findings
Quote "This snap decision by the minister ignores the advice of his own scientists ", I seem to remember that the Today program also said that the advice was from a report in the early 90's.
The population has increased since then.
And lets get the Race of Cormorants involved right, It is Sinensis as stated in a previous post. This race has respread from the inland waterways of Asia and Europe to the U.K. Just like humans, when the population in an area gets too large they emmigrate and live off the available resources elswhere. Lack of food in the sea is not the reason for the recent explosion of the Sinensis population. What other fish eating bird has increased inland to this extent?. The Carbo race tend to stick to a saltwater diet.
It is dificult to tell exactly how many fish a Cormorant will eat per day,( its generally accepted that its about 450 grams weight ).
But unless you dig a big hole, fill it with water, put in X number of fish. Leave it a year then drain it and count the fish again, you cannot say exactly what the damage is. But when you see up to fifty birds on a lake every day its easy to do the maths.
Quote" There must be a better way than to shoot them"!.
I agree!.
Personally I think they should be deported back to their country of origin as economic migrants.
"Each Licence is for up to 10 birds!. So licenses have already been issued to remove up to 5450 in each year between 1996 and 2002, but the most birds "recorded" shot in and one year was 225.
What has really changed?."
The level of proof of damage required before a license is issued.
Dave
What has really changed?."
The level of proof of damage required before a license is issued.
Dave
Edward woodwood
Member
cheers Ian
am i to take it that sinensis birds are not coming from North Sea areas then?
am i to take it that sinensis birds are not coming from North Sea areas then?
Nightranger
Senior Moment
Tim Allwood said:
I think it has been established that the birds are from southern Germany where there has been massive habitat loss (jurek, any comment?) but I am not sure if this was established during the DNA testing or by charting ringed bird movements.
Mike Pennington
Registered Member
Bizarre. When a predator increases because humans provide lots of food in the form of introduced fish we blame the predator and shoot it!
Yes, there will be an effect on native fish, and if this is serious then something should be done. I don't have the facts but I would suspect that native fish are suffering as much from pollution and competition with alien fish as they are from natural predation. Blythkeith is quite right - if its a problem that fish are under threat they deserve just as much protection as anything else. But let's establish the cause of the problem first, otherwise we are in danger of making the same puerile and simplistic connections that Songbird Survival make.
One obvious solution would be to make the fish harder for predators to catch - but that would probably make them harder for anglers to catch so I bet that won't work.
And why shoot them if scaring is just as effective?
The link between lack of fish in the North Sea and increases at inland sites in England is totally spurious. The new birds have not come from coastal British sites.
Another thread where I am astounded by the way some people leap to conclusions. I await a good pro-cull argument, but I'm certainly prepared to listen to it.
Yes, there will be an effect on native fish, and if this is serious then something should be done. I don't have the facts but I would suspect that native fish are suffering as much from pollution and competition with alien fish as they are from natural predation. Blythkeith is quite right - if its a problem that fish are under threat they deserve just as much protection as anything else. But let's establish the cause of the problem first, otherwise we are in danger of making the same puerile and simplistic connections that Songbird Survival make.
One obvious solution would be to make the fish harder for predators to catch - but that would probably make them harder for anglers to catch so I bet that won't work.
And why shoot them if scaring is just as effective?
The link between lack of fish in the North Sea and increases at inland sites in England is totally spurious. The new birds have not come from coastal British sites.
Another thread where I am astounded by the way some people leap to conclusions. I await a good pro-cull argument, but I'm certainly prepared to listen to it.
Keith Reeder
Watch the birdie...
This is neither pro nor anti cull, but I am an angling birder (or birding angler) and have a vested interest - and quite a lot of first hand experience of - this issue.
I think a bit of perspective and clarification might help.
Firstly, I don't think that the whys and wherefores of the increase in cormorant predation is really relevant to what follows: but for the record, I don't believe that overfishing at sea is the "cause". A contributory factor? Probably. The catalyst? Quite likely. But it doesn't matter, and here's why.
It is absolutely crucial to a full understanding of the cormorant/anglers situation that - unlike almost everywhere else in the world - freshwater fish in England and Wales, almost without exception, belong to somebody.
They are in fact property, and are simply not "wild" the way birds are - they are really livestock, if the truth be known.
The law allows a property owner to take such (legal) steps as are necessary to protect his property, and therefore it is entirely reasonable for a fishery owner or manager to expect to be able to protect the fish in their waters from (over) predation.
And it does happen.
These fish are often only present as a result of significant financial investment, as indeed are the lakes and ponds we put them into (I won't try too hard to play the "anglers as creators of new wildlife habitats" card, because our reasons for doing so are obviously not always entirely altruistic: it would be foolish though to totally ignore the reality of this "by-product" of angling activity), and very often the financial investment is not made in order to obtain a financial return (which is the case with commerical fisheries), but simply in order to allow groups of like-minded individuals to indulge in their passion in peace and safety.
Now then, once you've understood the idea that fish are in effect livestock, you might start to understand the impetus for the desire to be able - in a worst case scenario, when all other measures to protect fish stocks have demonstrably failed - to take what is undeniably the drastic action of a controlled culling of cormorants at a local level, on a case-by-case basis.
However, the reality of this "change" in the law needs a bit more looking into.
I know from direct personal experience that in the vast majority of cases, a licence to cull will not be granted, even following this change.
The simple reason is that even if a fishery owner or manager can prove incontrovertably that cormorants are destroying a water to fishing, it is almost certain that the OWNER OF THE LAND (almost always a different person to the one that owns or manages the fishery) will refuse to allow the shooting to take place anyway.
Where angling takes place on public land (ie common land, or land publicly owned by county councils, local authorites etc), these bodies will dismiss any request to shoot cormorants out of hand.
Similarly it is entirely likely that many private land owners will have similar reservations about allowing it to take place on their land - certainly this was the experience of the club I used to run, and friends elsewhere in the country tell similar tales.
Likewise, where angling is taking place on a "shared use" basis with other water users, licences will not be granted, and where angling is taking place on SSSIs, nature reserves and such (more common than you might think) then again, shooting just will not be allowed.
The only likely beneficiaries of this change are those relatively few commerical fishery owners who own the fish, the water they're in and the land the waters are on - and they've been able to do this for some time anyway.
In other words, this "change" is hardly more than a "sop" - a way to let anglers feel that when it comes right down to the crunch, there MIGHT be one last solution to fall back on.
In reality though, most anglers have already accepted that shooting isn't the cure-all it was once thought to be, and are investing far more time and money in creating fish refuges within the fisheries, and attempting to come up with ways of discouraging the birds from visiting the waters in the first place.
One thing I would add is that attempts to scare cormorants away are not effective: they learn quickly that there is no real threat, or they simply move out of range of whatever is scaring them.
This has been strongly indicated in other countries with a cormorant predation problem, and alternative solutions on the continent have included government-funded compensation for fish losses, simply because there are few if any truly effective strategies for dealing with the problem itself.
Anyway, to close, it is hard to see the justification for criticism when we're just trying to (legally) protect what's ours...
I think a bit of perspective and clarification might help.
Firstly, I don't think that the whys and wherefores of the increase in cormorant predation is really relevant to what follows: but for the record, I don't believe that overfishing at sea is the "cause". A contributory factor? Probably. The catalyst? Quite likely. But it doesn't matter, and here's why.
It is absolutely crucial to a full understanding of the cormorant/anglers situation that - unlike almost everywhere else in the world - freshwater fish in England and Wales, almost without exception, belong to somebody.
They are in fact property, and are simply not "wild" the way birds are - they are really livestock, if the truth be known.
The law allows a property owner to take such (legal) steps as are necessary to protect his property, and therefore it is entirely reasonable for a fishery owner or manager to expect to be able to protect the fish in their waters from (over) predation.
And it does happen.
These fish are often only present as a result of significant financial investment, as indeed are the lakes and ponds we put them into (I won't try too hard to play the "anglers as creators of new wildlife habitats" card, because our reasons for doing so are obviously not always entirely altruistic: it would be foolish though to totally ignore the reality of this "by-product" of angling activity), and very often the financial investment is not made in order to obtain a financial return (which is the case with commerical fisheries), but simply in order to allow groups of like-minded individuals to indulge in their passion in peace and safety.
Now then, once you've understood the idea that fish are in effect livestock, you might start to understand the impetus for the desire to be able - in a worst case scenario, when all other measures to protect fish stocks have demonstrably failed - to take what is undeniably the drastic action of a controlled culling of cormorants at a local level, on a case-by-case basis.
However, the reality of this "change" in the law needs a bit more looking into.
I know from direct personal experience that in the vast majority of cases, a licence to cull will not be granted, even following this change.
The simple reason is that even if a fishery owner or manager can prove incontrovertably that cormorants are destroying a water to fishing, it is almost certain that the OWNER OF THE LAND (almost always a different person to the one that owns or manages the fishery) will refuse to allow the shooting to take place anyway.
Where angling takes place on public land (ie common land, or land publicly owned by county councils, local authorites etc), these bodies will dismiss any request to shoot cormorants out of hand.
Similarly it is entirely likely that many private land owners will have similar reservations about allowing it to take place on their land - certainly this was the experience of the club I used to run, and friends elsewhere in the country tell similar tales.
Likewise, where angling is taking place on a "shared use" basis with other water users, licences will not be granted, and where angling is taking place on SSSIs, nature reserves and such (more common than you might think) then again, shooting just will not be allowed.
The only likely beneficiaries of this change are those relatively few commerical fishery owners who own the fish, the water they're in and the land the waters are on - and they've been able to do this for some time anyway.
In other words, this "change" is hardly more than a "sop" - a way to let anglers feel that when it comes right down to the crunch, there MIGHT be one last solution to fall back on.
In reality though, most anglers have already accepted that shooting isn't the cure-all it was once thought to be, and are investing far more time and money in creating fish refuges within the fisheries, and attempting to come up with ways of discouraging the birds from visiting the waters in the first place.
One thing I would add is that attempts to scare cormorants away are not effective: they learn quickly that there is no real threat, or they simply move out of range of whatever is scaring them.
This has been strongly indicated in other countries with a cormorant predation problem, and alternative solutions on the continent have included government-funded compensation for fish losses, simply because there are few if any truly effective strategies for dealing with the problem itself.
Anyway, to close, it is hard to see the justification for criticism when we're just trying to (legally) protect what's ours...
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Edward woodwood
Member
So, we can now take it as a fact that north sea fish stock depletion is not the reason for the increase in inland cormorants; they are continental birds - another spurious 'truth' that could have become an urban myth if not challenged.
Yes Mike - it's bizarre indeed.
The world has turned upside down it seems
Yes Mike - it's bizarre indeed.
The world has turned upside down it seems
Keith Reeder
Watch the birdie...
Tiim, Mike,
does the "fish as livestock" point not at least make some sense?
And as an aside - Tim, whether these birds have "migrated" to the UK because they can't find enough to eat in the North Sea or because they can't find enough to eat ("habitat depletion") in their native Germany, the actual underlying cause is pretty much the same, isn't it?
does the "fish as livestock" point not at least make some sense?
And as an aside - Tim, whether these birds have "migrated" to the UK because they can't find enough to eat in the North Sea or because they can't find enough to eat ("habitat depletion") in their native Germany, the actual underlying cause is pretty much the same, isn't it?
Mike Pennington
Registered Member
blythkeith said:
Keith Reeder
Watch the birdie...
The reason that fish are still considered livestock is because of the market for, and trade in, fish-breeding.
I can go out and buy the fish I need to stock a water from scratch (and have done), which is really analagous to starting a farm.
Also, fish breeding is effectively controlled (by and large) by using pre-existing laws on livestock rearing, obviating the need for novel legislation.
Initially this all came about though, as a way to prevent the peasantry from helping themselves to contents of the the Lord of the manor's moat.
I can go out and buy the fish I need to stock a water from scratch (and have done), which is really analagous to starting a farm.
Also, fish breeding is effectively controlled (by and large) by using pre-existing laws on livestock rearing, obviating the need for novel legislation.
Initially this all came about though, as a way to prevent the peasantry from helping themselves to contents of the the Lord of the manor's moat.
Edward woodwood
Member
I can see some point in this (livestock angle) and am generally in favour of supporting peoples livelihoods by subsidy and help.
Trouble is when so many falsehoods are perpetuated I stop listening as i don't have time to check everything and everything becomes suspect. The shooting lobby and general 'countryside' lobby have shot themselves in the foot by using such terrible science as Songbird Survival and anecdotes that become 'truths' by repetition.
Trouble is when so many falsehoods are perpetuated I stop listening as i don't have time to check everything and everything becomes suspect. The shooting lobby and general 'countryside' lobby have shot themselves in the foot by using such terrible science as Songbird Survival and anecdotes that become 'truths' by repetition.
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