Fish and Wildlife Service seeks input on cormorants

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking public input on future management options regarding double-crested cormorants.

In 2017, the agency completed an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act to evaluate options for issuing individual depredation per- mits. The depredation permits are a tool to provide relief for aquaculture facilities which experience direct economic losses from cormorants in 37 states and the District of Columbia.

This review did not include damage to recreational and commercial fishing by cormorants. Since the assessment was published, the Fish and Wildlife Service asked stakeholders to assess the biological, social and economic significance of cormorant predation on wild fisheries, and to identify management alternatives.

The damage that cormorants inflict on fish farms is well documented, but recreational anglers have been complaining about cormorant predation on publicly owned fisheries for decades. A New York study showed that double-crested cormorants consume an estimated 1.3 million bass per year on Lake Ontario.

A Kentucky study revealed that cormorants consume vast numbers of shad, which also is the primary forage for most popular game fish.

Robert Montgomery wrote a comprehensive article about cormorants in the April 23, 2018, issue of Bassmaster

Magazine. Large cormorant colonies don’t just affect fish but also water quality and marine forests. Montgomery quoted Frank Fiss, chief of fisheries for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

“Their droppings change the pH [of water] and everything dies,” Fiss said.

Cormorants also kill trees where they concentrate, including ancient cypress trees on Reelfoot Lake. They survived the New Madrid earthquakes that created Reelfoot, but observers said they are dying because of cormorants. Similar damage has been documented on Lake Champlain and Lake Erie, where a colony of 20,000 birds has so far killed 40 percent of the tree canopy on Middle Island.

The damage has intensified since 2016 when animal welfare activists persuaded a federal court in Washington, D.C., to embar the Fish and Wildlife Service from issuing depredation permits.

Public scoping for the rule-making process started Wednesday and will end March 9.

To comment electronically, visit regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments to Docket No. FWS-HQ-MB-2019-0103.

By mail, send comments to Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS–HQ–MB–2019– 0103; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters, MS: JAO/1N, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Va., 22041–3803.

The Fish and Wildlife Service will post all comments on regulations.gov, including any personal information you provide. The agency will hold public scoping meetings in the form of multiple webinars in February.

More information about the rule-making process, cormorants and meetings, including how to register, will be posted online at fws.gov/birds/management/managedspecies/double-crestedcormorants.php

CWD MEETING IN BATESVILLE

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will hold a public meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday in Batesville to discuss the recent discovery of chronic wasting disease in Independence County.

The meeting will be at the University of Arkansas Community College, 2005 White Drive, in Room 902 of the Nursing and Allied Health Building.

One CWD positive deer sample was detected in Independence County during the 2019-20 deer season from a deer that was killed illegally. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission tested the deer through its usual procedures. Two laboratories confirmed that the deer had the disease.

Cory Gray, chief of the AGFC’s Research, Evaluation and Compliance Division, said the meeting is structured to inform the public about the disease and give local landowners and hunters an additional chance to communicate one-on-one with Game and Fish Commission wildlife management staff about the disease.

LEGENDARY DUCK CALLER DIES

Pat Peacock, 81, the first woman to be appointed to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, died Jan. 17.

Peacock was the first woman appointed to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in 1994 when Gov. Jim Guy Tucker chose her to complete the term of C. Maurice Lewis Jr., who died during the sixth year of his appointment.

A duck calling legend, Peacock was the only person to win all of the duck-calling titles offered at the World Championship Duck Calling Contest in Stuttgart. She won the Junior World Duck Calling Championship at age 12, the Women’s World Championship five times, the World Duck Calling Championship twice and the Champion of Champions world title in 1960. She also was the first Queen Mallard of the Wings Over the Prairie Festival in 1955.

Anne Marie Doramus of Little Rock is the first woman to be appointed to a full term on the commission.