ACID REIGN (via Robert Schwartz):

Protected Birds Return, With a Vengeance (LISA W. FODERARO, 7/01/05, NY Times)

The double-crested cormorants perch like conquerors at the tops of the spindly white pines, their driftwood-gray branches devoid of needles. The trees were killed off, along with much of the other vegetation on the small rocky islands here in Lake Champlain, by the birds' highly acidic droppings.

As they have across the United States, double-crested cormorants, large migratory water birds, have proliferated on the lake in recent years: from none before 1980 to 3,800 breeding pairs last year.

The birds' ability to take over islands for use as nesting colonies where they can ruin the habitat for other birds and down tremendous amounts of fish has raised alarms among anglers, state environmental officials and wildlife biologists. But while officials in New York have worked to control the population elsewhere in the state - by oiling eggs, destroying nests and even shooting the birds - they have been stymied on Lake Champlain.

The cormorants here nest on the Four Brothers Islands, which are owned by the Nature Conservancy's Adirondack chapter. When the state's Department of Environmental Conservation asked the environmental organization for permission to "manage" the cormorants there, the conservancy politely but firmly declined. [...]

Historic records indicate that cormorants were present throughout the East when European settlers arrived, although none were documented on Lake Champlain. In the 1800's, cormorants were mercilessly hunted both for their feathers and because they competed for fish. The pesticide DDT depressed their numbers further in the 20th century. But since the 1970's, cormorants have rebounded under an amendment to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. There are now an estimated two million in North America, according to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

Scientists and wildlife officials say the rise of sprawling fish farms in the Southeast, where cormorants spend the winter, has provided the birds with a tremendous new food source. Scientists like David E. Capen, a research professor of wildlife biology at the University of Vermont and an expert on cormorants, say that this should mean more support to control the population.

"There's a human management of these populations in the wintertime by essentially giving them food, and to me, that's a very unnatural component," he said. "That's what justifies the management of the population on the breeding grounds."

Not how they throw the DDT in there--an article of faith. Just declare permanent open season and the problem goes away.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 3, 2005 9:03 AM