EMPIRE, Mich. (AP) - Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has received federal permission to continue killing some double-crested cormorants to prevent the fish-gobbling shorebirds from damaging trees with their highly acidic droppings, officials said.
Once in decline, the black shorebirds with orange bills and wingspans of up to four feet have rebounded spectacularly since receiving federal protection in the early 1970s. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2003 developed a policy allowing their population to be managed under some circumstances, through measures such as killing adults or covering eggs with oil.
Officials at Sleeping Bear Dunes, in Michigan’s northwestern Lower Peninsula, killed some cormorants in 2006 and 2007 under an order that was scheduled to expire in June. But the Traverse City Record-Eagle (https://bit.ly/1lR4mRQ ) reported Wednesday that it has been extended to 2019.
“It doesn’t allow you to go willy-nilly” with indiscriminate killing, said Karen Cleveland, a biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “It protects the viability of the species in the state while providing wide latitude for management actions.”
Lakeshore staffers are monitoring a cormorant population that roosts on a shipwreck near Lake Michigan’s South Manitou Island to prevent them from straying too close to the island’s cedar trees.
“The cormorants nest in such densities up there that they can kill the trees just with the pH of their droppings around the trees,” said Tom Ulrich, deputy superintendent.
The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians has participated in the management program since 2007, tribal fish biologist Erik Olsen said.
Tribe members were concerned because of cormorants’ voracious appetite for fish - invasive species like alewives and gobies, as well as prized sport varieties such as perch, walleye and whitefish.
“The total poundage out of Grand Traverse Bay was astronomical from mid-May to Oct. 1,” Olsen said.
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Information from: Traverse City Record-Eagle, https://www.record-eagle.com
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