Pesky fish-eating birds targeted again
The Associated Press
Cormorants are dark-feathered birds with wingspans that can reach 4 feet. Biologists blame their voracious fish appetite for depleting certain fisheries. Critics have said their presence has hurt tourism and fishing from the western Upper Peninsula to the northern Lower Peninsula.
The Bay City Times reported Saturday that managers plan to reduce the birds' breeding flocks by about two-thirds at colonies on Thunder Bay near Alpena and on the eastern U.P.'s Les Cheneaux Islands. Officials will either shoot adult birds or oil eggs in nests to prevent them from hatching.
On Thunder Bay, researchers say the migratory bird has devastated whitefish and stocked brown trout.
"Virtually all the fish biomass in Thunder Bay was being allocated to feeding cormorants by 2004," said Jim Johnson, fisheries research biologist and manager for the DNR's Alpena research station.
"Even by 2003 our estimates showed they were eating more fish biomass that we even knew existed in Thunder Bay. The numbers were astounding," Johnson said.