Thanks to Wildlife Watch and other organizations and individuals
opposing the killing of hatched cormorants, hatched cormorants
will not be killed in spite of efforts by New York State and Vermont
game agencies to kill the birds. The Watertown Daily Times editorial
said recently:
"Bowing to the animal rights groups, the federal agency
said that it will not permit the killing of adult cormorants, which
was part of a five-year management plan developed by the state
DEC."
HOORAY FOR HINCHEY AND THE CORMORANTS
Maurice D. Hinchey is a congressman, but who are cormorants?
Cormorants are the most amazing birds on the planet (at least on
this page). They are deep divers and have been caught in fishing
nets of 165 feet.
Cormorants are generous, they share their fishing grounds with
humans. You don't see them complain, do you, that humans have been
polluting the waters, over-fishing for commercial purposes, and
destroying water ecology through management for sport fishing,
in addition to stealing their food. Yet anglers have the chutzpa
to complain that cormorants have been eating all the fish they
want to kill for fun!
Past campaigns to exterminate cormorants have shown that persecution
is unjustified as cormorants take fish that live deeper than the
small-mouthed bass that anglers were yelling about.
WILDLIFE WATCH MAKES CORMORANTS A TOP
PRIORITY!
Wildlife Watch recently made the protection of hatched cormorants
one of its top priorities as New York and Vermont game agencies
had requested depredation permits from the US Fish and Wildlife
Service to kill hundreds of cormorants as a prelude to a regular
annual kill.
Wildlife Watch wrote prototype comments and solicited further
comments from other organizations and individuals. Further, we
appealed to our local congressman, Maurice Hinchey, who was THE
ONLY federal representative to call the FWS to state his strong
opposition to the killing. Hooray for Congressman Maurice Hinchey!
On the other hand…
BOO McHUGH
No, McHugh's not a bird, yet his feathers were and probably
still are ruffled; a conundrum for another day. Let's just say
that if John McHugh (24th Congressional District encompassing 10
counties in Northern NY) and the DEC had had their way, hundreds
of cormorants would have been killed by the time you received this
publication. The insanity of it all is that almost a year ago,
madmen, presumably sport anglers, entered Little Galloo Island
at night and massacred 840 cormorants. They were found shot to
death along with at least 100 crippled adults and orphaned young.
In one night they wiped out 10% of the population. McHugh didn't
feel that was sufficient. He was going to ensure a total wipeout.
John McHugh and the DEC wanted legal killing to the tune of thousands.
Shocking news! According to the most
recent minutes of the NYS Conservation Fund Advisory Board, comprised
of hunters, trappers
and anglers, the people who massacred the cormorants got a plea
agreement of 6 months home incarceration, a $2,500 fine and a $5,000
contribution to the Fish and Wildlife Foundation we'll be sending
a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request and doing an investigation
into this.
…BOO BRAGMAN, TOO
It's no surprise that on McHugh's website he says, "Assemblyman
Bragman and I asked the US Fish and Wildlife Service to consider…" (to
get past the euphemisms, he was asking to kill birds during the
time they are developing a plan to kill birds!)
