The Globe and Mail, Saturday, August 22, 2009
Condemned to death: What happens when a rescue plan works too well
By Sharon Oosthoek
Thirty years ago, the cormorant was a poster bird for the campaign to clean up DDT, the pesticide killing creatures here and abroad. The Great Lakes, home to 900 nesting pairs in the early 1950s, had a mere 125 by 1973, with scientists unable to find even a single pair on Lake Michigan or Lake Superior.
Photos showing chicks born with crossed beaks and unable to feed led to public outrage and a reduction in use of the chemical, giving the bird a chance to bounce back.
Double-crested cormorant. (Courtesy Parks Canada)
And bounce back it has. Today, the cormorant is more numerous on the Great Lakes than at any time in recorded history. Now the “crow ducks” are so common that some of them have been condemned to death – a bizarre state of affairs for a species so recently in peril.
In fact, says Mark Ridgway, a biologist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, it’s the first time in Canada “we’ve gone from having an organism that’s a rarity to having a management issue. No one’s confronted this before.”
The cormorant has become one of the growing number of cases in which human intervention, however well-meaning, has had unintended consequences.
From elephants in South Africa to alligators in Florida and even the newly reintroduced plains bison in Saskatchewan, wildlife managers accustomed to dealing with endangered species are starting to confront some that have become “hyper-abundant.” Animals once in grave danger have become a threat to others.
So what is a responsible conservationist to do – let nature run its course and hope for the best or, to paraphrase George Orwell, kill the cormorants because some lives are more sacred than others?
