James, there are two different types of cormorant classification, one is an inland bird, one is a sea bird. Here are a couple of articles - writtn in 2008 - that may help members understand the problem a little more. One is written by me for the Echoes magazine, and the one that follows after is written by Martin Read in response to my artical.
The Cormorant... A Beautiful Bird or the ‘Black Plague’?
Having spoken to a number of non-members of ECHO regarding their reasons for not joining the organisation, many seemed to feel as though ECHO’s remit was far broader than it actually is, as though in many ways they felt the organisation was ‘failing’ to address some of the more contentious issues of the day - the otter, the cormorant, bird-life in general, aggregates used as fishing aids, bait content, the dropping of leads, pollution etc. “Why aren’t ECHO dealing with these issues?”
Let’s be quite clear in this regard, it is not part of ECHO’s ‘Aims & Objectives’ to be involved on every level of carping as some form of arbiter as to what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in our sport today! Many carpers would like a quasi-mentor organisation that tackles all the ‘perceived’ wrongs that are created in and outside of our control, but in truth ECHO can only accomplish that which is at the very top of any informed carpers list, and that is the prevention of disease and associated malpractice among the wider community, within the massive and hugely commercial sport of carp fishing.
Disease, in many ways, will alter the nature of how we fish for carp in the years to come, quite probably more so than any ‘anti-angling lobby’, in fact it could well be disease and the associated problems delivered upon these wonderful creatures, enacted by the less reputable among our industry, that may give the anti’s greater leverage in their arguments against angling? However, that debate is for another day.
There are many nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) that deal with many different facets in respect to the angling community, as well as Government funded Depts. which naturally overlap into ‘carping waters’. There is much expertise within these various fields and although ECHO interacts with these organisations, ‘Angling Unity’ through the Fisheries and Angling Conservation Trust (FACT, which is now Angling Trust) will lead the way to ensuring that anglings interests are interwoven with those of the ‘wider concern’ regarding the conservation of Britain’s rich and complex natural environment and not ECHO per se’.
But, shouldn’t we have an idea as to what is ‘going on’? As members of ECHO I would believe that we care for more than just simply safe guarding our own code of the sport, I’m sure many of you are also interested in other codes and of equal importance, wouldn’t we by association be equally concerned regarding the wider issues that can and do affect our fish stocks?
This new feature in the magazine isn’t so much an ECHO stand point; rather it is one that I personally feel may assist some of the membership with an understanding of the wider issues that naturally intertwine with our sport, through ‘contentious practices across the board’ and by other means of ‘natural’ manifestations. So, without further ado and to kick start the first of many articles hopefully, as it is for you the membership to decide as to whether we should be treading on ground that isn’t necessarily under the ECHO umbrella, I will be looking at the problems that we face with the influx of cormorants to inland waters.
First off it may be best to introduce the bird itself! The Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) has always been seen as a competitor in fishing communities, so much so, that it was very nearly extinct in the past through mass culling. The proliferation of the current cormorant population can, in many ways, be viewed as a ‘success story’ for conservationists, as the populations of the bird throughout Europe has grown remarkably. Population numbers are sketchy, but anywhere between a half million and one and a half million throughout Europe are the varying estimates, with the lower end being quite probably being the closer.
In and around the British Isles around 25,000 birds winter, of which there are approximately 7,500 nesting pairs and of those, around 1500 pairs that nest inland. 500 hundred of those inland pairs are on 4 sites so we are left with around 1000 pairs that breed the length and breadth of Britain within inland waters. Of the 25,000 birds wintering in and around the British Isles, 40% (10,000) are estimated to winter inland.
Now therein lays the ‘inland fishing communities’ problem - with the proliferation of the species and its ubiquity, many of ‘our’ fish are finding their way into the stomachs of cormorants, dying trees are used as nesting sites and many islands etc. have begun to resemble macabre scenes that remind me of some of the more mediaeval oil paintings that I’m more used to seeing on the cover of a Black Sabbath album! An adult cormorant will eat on average approximately 1lb of fish a day...
In recent years measures have been introduced within the British Isles whereby the respective countries governing bodies, Defra, Nawad, Seerad and the EHS, can issue licences to fishery owners and managers, and as yet the obtaining of a licence seems to have been largely poor on the up-take by those affected, or on many occasions poorly timed. The system of licensing is only as effective as those that wish to apply, and on many occasions it appears as though fishery owners and managers are applying after the ‘horse has bolted’. When the problem has become serious on such venues, it is only then that licences are being applied for and far too late in many cases. Licences are (in the main) only available between September 1st and the 15th April - so fisheries etc. need to build solid strategies to defend their stock and they also need to have exhausted other methods of protecting their stock before licences are sanctioned by the relevant issuing bodies.
There is a mine of information and help for those most affected (contact details below) and it is very much hoped that all of that information and assistance necessary to deal with the problem effectively will be sought by the concerned parties to find a ‘workable solution’ to the predicament before it becomes unmanageable. Obtaining licences for shooting the cormorants aren’t the ‘be all and end all’, as many seem to think, sites that see a large influx of the bird are generally seeing an increase due to an abundance of prey for the cormorant and any birds shot will be replaced by others. There are other preventative measures to be undertaken before licences will be issued for fishery managers to use - as an additional ‘scaring technique’ – whereby shooting to kill a small number of birds, in effect, is only recommended as the final option once all other preventative measures have been utilised and have failed to redress the balance. It is not a licence that permits localised culling as a means to an end, as there is the Wildlife and Countryside act of 1981 to incorporate into any strategy to help ease the pressure on fish stocks.
Why does there seem to be more cormorants inland, aren’t they a sea-bird?Cormorants were never just a sea-bird and it is natural for them to build inland populations, although I must admit I was of a similar opinion until recently. The reason we see more cormorants inland is due to a number of factors and it is not solely because of the successful enlargement of their population. During the 1950’s & 60’s there were extensive builds of motorways and new housing after WWII, and in turn many more aggregate pits were formed and filled with water - in addition a growing human population needed more water reservoirs that were logistically constructed to supply the utilities required to sustain an ever expanding number of resident people. Combine the diminishing pelagic (open sea) food resources available in the coastal areas and we begin to see the ‘unwitting’ engineering for the widespread dispersal of a successful population of cormorants to inland areas. The birds will utilize the resources made available to them, as is their natural instinct.
In some ways fish farmers and anglers add to the problem through the use of fishmeal and oils in the rearing and catching of inland species, and thereby adding additional pressure on the diminishing sea-stocks available for the cormorant and many other species to flourish in the coastal regions of Great Britain. With the decline of much of the industrial pollution within our inland waters, as opposed to the worsening conditions of the world’s oceans, there has also been the opportunity for many forms of wild birds to flourish inland, and in addition to the cormorant, ‘sawbill’ ducks, goosanders in particular are causing localised problems of natural fish stocks including salmon smolt and trout. We also have to consider the impact of the changing environmental circumstances on a European and near continent scale, where birds have moved geographically to seek better climes such as Britain with our warmer winters in addition to the abundance of fish stock.
The cormorant issue has to be viewed as a management problem and not one that is solved through culling. Measures on a European Community level are a long time in bearing a consensus of agreement among all the member nations, as the issue isn’t viewed as serious enough of a problem on a pan-European scale to warrant the necessary depth of debate to assist those communities that is does seriously effect through European legislation.
For those that require assistance and further information there is a fantastic resource available via the internet that is produced for anglers and fishery management by the Moran Committee Joint Bird Group and it can be found through
THIS LINKReferences used researching for this article: Defra; Natural England; Science Daily; Wikipedia; The Moran Committee.
Copyright Richard Crimp ©To this article Martin Read, who helped prepare the Moran Committee Joint Bird Group paper, replied with this article;Cormorants, by Martin Read
I read with interest Richard Crimp’s article about cormorants in the winter edition and, for what it’s worth, would like to add my own experience with what has, up until otters came along, been anglers’ number one enemy. My personal introduction came on an October day in 1999.
During that summer anglers fishing our club lakes at Ravenfield in South Yorkshire had complained that the fishing had deteriorated. As chairman I could have taken a knee jerk reaction and restocked, but instead attempted to ‘measure’ the deterioration first. What I found was that our match weights, which had increased year upon year for many years had suddenly fallen by approximately half.
Early one fateful morning I found the answer when, just a light was beginning to break, 36 cormorants flew in over the water like a flight of fighter planes. In seconds they had landed and for the next 15 minutes I together with two colleagues watched as they consumed what looked like vast quantities of fish. Unable to watch any longer we frightened the birds off. It was a sobering experience and for the following five months two committee members were on site before dawn every day to scare any visiting birds away. The subsequent effect on our club soon became apparent, we lost half our members and income and the efforts we had made to restore 60 acres of historic parkland and ponds, for wildlife as well as an angling facility were immediately put in jeopardy.
At the time I knew nothing about cormorants but was quick to learn. I applied for a licence to shoot and was turned down, even though I had evidence of catch returns and damaged fish. Soon after we employed a gas gun, designed and built fish refuges and began using floating islands. We embarked on an exercise with CEFAS to film their use under water and assess their effectiveness. I was told that the reason I did not get a licence was because we had not been shooting to scare, something I couldn’t ask an angler to do for fear he lost control, shot some and was prosecuted. I was livid, contacted my local MP and the following year was granted a licence, which I have renewed each year since.
By this time I had read everything I could about the birds, spoken to experts from all disciplines and had begun to understand the problem more widely. In subsequent talks which I gave to clubs, fisheries and even the Environment Agency, I would explain that there were many species worldwide with two carbo carbo (coastal) and carbo sinensis (inland) in Europe. Also that the birds can weigh up to 6lbs, have a 60 inch wing span, have two young per year and with luck, which many don’t have, live for 15 years eating approximately 1lb of fish /day. Strangely their underwater vision is not good and they feed by grabbing at anything that moves, rather than by sight. Unlike anglers however, they fish - usually successfully - every day, they don’t take holidays, buy licences, day tickets, or permits, and never return their catch!
Prior to this firsthand experience I had only heard of problems in the south and their sudden appearance ‘north of Watford’ puzzled me. I was to determine that the population increase had been attributed to three main causes, the first being the demise in the use of organochlorine chemicals like DDT, the second to an increased food supply as rivers improved and more ponds and pits began to hold fish and finally, and possibly to the main reason, that in 1979 the EU provided protection for all birds under the Wild Birds Directive. This latter ruling being incorporated in the UK as the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
Given protection, bird numbers increased rapidly and by 1992 had increased 10% in Holland, 24% in Denmark, 30% in Germany, from 2000 to 11000 in Sweden, from 2000 to 14000 in East Germany, from 2000 to 16000 in Poland and from zero to 14000 in the Czech Republic. This population explosion soon spilt over into the UK and the influx of inland nesting European birds to the UK began in 1984 when a pair, nested at Abberton Reservoir in Essex. DNA tests showed that they had come from Denmark.
Records show that in 1998 approximately 7500 pairs nested in the UK, approximately 6000 on the coast and 1500 inland, but no records were available for birds simply roosting, rather than nesting, at non nest sites. And in the winter a further 5000 pairs overwintered here, 3500 of which were inland. These figures equate to some 50,000 birds, young included. A truly staggering number and one never admitted by any of the bird organisations who continue to only count pairs, i.e. nests rather than total numbers.
In 2003 experts believed that there were 250,000 pairs of birds in Europe, which, with two immature young/pair amounted to around 1 million individuals. In 2005, I believe, an attempt was made to carry out a survey across Europe. A date and time was selected to count the birds and ‘counters’ were invited to send their results to the Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust or the RSPB. I sought guidance on which sites were being counted and none of my local roost sites were registered. I subsequently counted in excess of 120 birds at just one site, demonstrating how the exercise seriously underestimated numbers. The last I heard, sometime later, was that the totals could not be produced because the UK had not reported its figures!
By this time I had had the opportunity to study the birds and the problems they caused in detail. Not only did they eat fish, but they also scared them, often to death, for dead fish could frequently be found in the margins days after the birds had visited, or caused them to take unnatural action by shoaling tightly in very shallow water, even in the depths of winter, believing that the birds found them more difficult to catch. In addition a great many fish suffered wounds. Fish would also stop feeding for weeks, the water dropping gin clear, making it even easier for the birds to find them. All of these factors result in fish being more difficult to catch and so convince anglers that all the fish have been eaten.
I also discovered that the birds are migratory, a fact that the RSPB at the time seemed not to recognise. I and others had observed huge flocks of cormorants going south in early winter and returning again in the spring. One day as while we were at the fishery, some 70+ birds came to feed and despite shooting some succeeded. Two however were shot and were found to have been ringed in the Solway Firth the previous summer. But there are far greater migratory routes across both Europe and Scandinavia, and in the States from Florida to the Gt. Lakes and back. It is now blatantly apparent to me that many of the problems experienced by fisheries throughout Europe and the USA are caused not by local birds but by immigrants from other areas/countries.
And so this lead to looking at what anglers and fisheries can do to limit the problem. Apart from the physical things that were put in place at our fishery, like fish refuges, floating islands, gas guns and the like I also spent 2 years collecting 36,000 signatures on a petition which was subsequently presented to Alun Michael - the then Defra Minister - seeking an easing of the rules to control the birds. Subsequently via the Moran Joint Bird Group, we were successful in persuading Ben Bradshaw to ease the regulations making it now much easier to obtain permission to shoot as an aid to scaring.
Does this solve the problem? Of course not, cormorants are problem across Europe and into the Middle East and particularly the States. Shooting under licence simply moves the birds to another fishery, and effective as some of the other techniques are they are mainly aimed at small still waters rather leaving rivers totally unprotected. Nevertheless I would, however, urge everyone who suffers from cormorant predation to apply to English Nature for a licence to shoot. They are not difficult to obtain if you demonstrate the problem and also take non lethal steps first of all to try to keep the birds away. In my experience, refuges, habitat improvements, scaring and shooting do hold the birds at bay. And if nothing else the application demonstrates to the authorities that there are problems.
In 2005, English Nature under pressure from the RSPB began closely monitoring bird numbers in order to demonstrate that the changes made by Ben Bradshaw are not having a deleterious effect on population numbers. Unfortunately it is unlikely that their models really take account of illegal shooting, which in my estimation kills more birds than are killed under licence, or action in Europe, where the French shoot 25,000/year legally, and the Norwegians too, free from EU rules also shoot a great number, to give just two examples.
Today there is a great deal of talk about cormorants again in Europe and the possibility of a European Management Plan. Don’t hold your breath; I just cannot see all the states, faced with their local lobbying organisations, ever agreeing to such a thing, not in the medium and short term anyway. If anglers and fishery owners would like to see any further changes put in place to help legally with cormorant problems they need first to convince the authorities (English Nature) at home.
For more information about the Ravenfield fishery
SEE HERECopyright Martin Read ©A lot of reading but it will hopefully give you further insight, and any thoughts regarding the 'Cormorant Problem', please post in here.
Richard
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