Hi Tweets,

Don't know if any of you saw this article in one of your papers, but it
appeared here in Monterey. Seems nothing's safe anymore.

>From the Monterey Peninsula Herald, Sat. Aug. 1, 1998

Protected birds found slaughtered
By Andrew C. Revkin (New York Times News Service)

Officially, the double-crested cormorant is a protected species, its safety
guarded by federal law.

But on the Lake Ontario shoreline west of Watertown, N.Y., the long-necked
black birds have become a pest to anglers, who say the growing colonies of
cormorants are devouring smallmouth bass and, along with them, the
livelihood of people who sell bait and run charter fishing trips.

This week, wildlife officials visiting an island nesting ground discovered
an usually shocking environmental crime: 840 cormorants killed by shotgun
fire and more than 100 others wounded. Although they have no suspects,
officials say they believe the festering conflict between conservation and
commerce is responsible for what they are calling one of the worst mass
killings of a federally protected bird species in recent decades.

State biologists said that when they went ashore on the uninhabited Little
Galloo Island on Wednesday they encountered heaps of carcasses of fledgling
cormorants piles of shotgun shells and starving chicks squawking weakly
among the carnage.

The mass shooting appeared to be the latest of several recent instances
where a once rare species has recovered to the point where it comes into
conflict with local interests. On July 23, the town of Carrollton, Texas -
without a federal permit - bulldozed a rookery filled with nesting little
blue herons, snowy egrets and other species protected by federal law. The
count of dead birds from that incident could be more than 1,000.

In Henderson and nearby fishing towns, owners of charter boats and other
fishing related businesses, joined by some officials have pressed the
government for several years to allow legalized hunting of cormorants.

Mitchell Snow, a spokesman for the Fish & Wildlife Service headquarters in
Washington, said that a quick survey of officials there turned up no past
mass killings of a protected species that compared with the cormorant
shooting, except perhaps for the incident in Texas.

"I've been with the department for almost 20 years and this is certainly the
biggest in my memory." he said.
Ben & Peggi Rodgers
Pacific Grove, CA (right next to Monterey)
USA
woodduck at mbay.net
http://www.mbay.net/~woodduck/



"A bird does not sing because it has an answer,
It sings because it has a song"