They've been called fish thieves, riverbank wreckers and alien invaders. But the slaughter of cormorants isn't justified, says a conservation biologist
IN JULY 1998 I visited Naubinway, Michigan, for the first time. The town is one of the state's few remaining commercial ports and fishing is the mainstay of its economy. But I wasn't there for the fish. I was headed for a small island about a kilometre offshore, uninhabited by people but teeming with bird life in the summertime.
Herring gulls and double-crested cormorants begin nesting in this part of the Great Lakes in May, and by mid-June there are thousands of chicks. I went there with my University of Minnesota colleagues Francie Cuthbert and Dave Smith as part of a study of cormorant population dynamics. I didn't know it then, but it was the beginning ...
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