“We’ve had increases (in cormorant numbers) before and they tend to balance out over time,” he said. He sees cormorants as an invader. Blue herons and night herons nested there, as did herring gulls. He wrote that they ate and defecated “inordinately” and had no song to charm, only grunts. Cormorants destroy vegetation with their acidic feces. Today, it has an estimated population of around 5,000. Cormorants are large, glossy black birds. Dan Kennedy from Michigan DNR joined Stateside to discuss the Kirtland warbler's remarkable comeback. They can chase fish in 100 feet of water. “It’s creating havoc on Ship Island,” he said of the strip of land in Lake Couchiching that has been laid to waste by cormorants, “but it’s also polluting our water.”, Cipolla would prefer to see the birds’ eggs oiled to prevent hatching, but he said hunting with a 15-per-day limit is “a good start.”. Surveys done a century ago found few of these birds in Lake Michigan and they were never known to nest in this area. Island residents think bass and perch fishing has improved since the birds numbers were brought down, although the ecosystem is too big and dynamic to prove cormorants caused any problems with sportfish. There were close to 10,000 cormorant pairs on West Sister Island in Lake Erie before the culling started in 2006, said Jason Lewis, the manager of the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in north Ohio. Nathan Taylor is an experienced multimedia journalist and editor who covers Orillia and other parts of Simcoe County. Cormorants have direct impacts on valuable and sensitive fish populations. Some wanted to establish hunting seasons—even though nobody eats cormorants. “It was totally silent,” she recalls. Ludwig warns of a larger issue in all this. Russ Mason is wildlife chief for the state Department of Natural Resources. In 2004, there were almost 1,800 double-crested cormorant nests on Goose Island, a strip of land in northern Lake Huron about 500 feet wide and less than a mile long. Cormorants are colonial nesters, with colonies holding up to 4,000 individuals. Michigan Sportsman - Online Michigan Hunting and Fishing Resource. “It’s an unnatural situation with all these birds here,” says Powers. It is one of six species of cormorants in North America and one of 38 species worldwide. Forums > Michigan Hunting > General Michigan Hunting > Cormorants Discussion in ' General Michigan Hunting ' started by Chad Fortier , Oct 16, 2020 . Powers is a veterinarian and angler who also owns the hardware store on Beaver Island. Right now, it’s illegal in the state of Michigan to hunt the sandhill crane, the state’s largest and oldest bird. It passed out of a House Committee in July. “I’m fond of saying that all a colonial waterbird had to do was fly out over the lake and open its bill and fall in and it’d have a fish,” says Ludwig, an American scientist who lives in Canada and works independently. Are cormorants social? The lawmakers holding the hearing were candid about their purpose: restore the use of lethal control against cormorants. When Romanik saw the cormorant colony on Goose Island, he saw a threat to one of his favorites place to hunt rabbits. “They’re coming back because of the round goby in Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching,” he said, adding he has been monitoring cormorant colonies in both lakes. He says humans are in danger of forgetting what a natural system looks like, while the planet gets crowded and warm. Page 1 of 2 1 2 Next > Aug 17, 2019 #1 . But the bill might not be necessary. Fish and Wildlife is already issuing permits to fish farmers in the southern U.S. to kill cormorants. Messages: 31,569 Likes Received: 38,100 Location: Brownstown. Bergman introduced legislation that would direct the U.S. Because Ludwig he has no affiliation with a university or agency, he says he is free to criticize government policy and was in fact a plaintiff in the lawsuit that stopped cormorant control in 2016.