Cormorant hunting to be allowed on lakes Marion, Moultrie for second year

Despite opposition from conservation groups and a lawsuit threatening the legality of the practice, the S.C. Department of Natural Resources plans to allow trained hunters to shoot cormorants on lakes Marion and Moultrie.

Volunteer hunters who went through the training last year and returned surveys detailing how many cormorants they killed will be allowed to participate in this year’s culling effort, from Feb. 14-March 14. About 1,200 hunters signed up last year, but only about 520 returned the required forms, said Derrell Shipes, chief of wildlife statewide projects for the state agency.

South Carolina received national attention last year when the volunteer hunters, technically considered agents of the state, reported killing 11,653 cormorants. According to a lawsuit filed to stop the effort, that accounted for nearly 25 percent of the national total of cormorants killed in the special removal programs approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“We had a willing public, and we took a bold step,” said Shipes, explaining the high numbers of birds killed here.

Some conservation groups oppose the rare effort to reduce the numbers of a migratory species. Also, they say the federal government should come up with a consistent plan rather than allowing each state to go its own way.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs to take the lead because it’s a national issue,” said Ben Gregg, executive director of the S.C. Wildlife Federation. “Cormorants don’t believe in state lines.”

Double-crested cormorants are large, brown-black birds with long necks. They usually aren’t among the species hunters are allowed to shoot. But the Fish and Wildlife Service last year allowed states to come up with removal programs to slow the rapid increase in the cormorant population in recent years. States were supposed to cull the species with their own wildlife agents, but the federal wildlife service allowed South Carolina to recruit volunteers.

Some people who fish on lakes Marion and Moultrie have complained for years that cormorants are eating increasing numbers of small fish, impacting the popular recreational fishery on the lakes. However, there’s been no in-depth scientific study on that issue.

The state also doesn’t have a good handle on how many cormorants nest and feed around the lakes or how last year’s removal of more than 11,000 birds affected the local population. Shipes said observations by agency staffers of the areas around dams where fish congregate indicate there were as many cormorants feeding at the end of last season as the year before.

Gregg doesn’t think that’s enough evidence.

“I’m not saying there’s no problem,” he said. “But by admission of both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Natural Resources, (last year’s effort) was not successful. If they’re making decisions based on science, why do they go back to the same system?”

In notices sent to the 520 hunters/agents, the state warned that the program could be put on hold at any time based on a ruling in a lawsuit filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

That suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., claims the federal wildlife agency violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to fully consider the environmental impacts of the cormorant removal program.

The suit also notes that there has been little study on the effect of cormorants on fish populations or the potential effect the culling program will have on cormorant populations.

In South Carolina, the state wildlife agency is in a difficult situation. The agency typically goes slowly and uses scientific data to back efforts to manage species. But legislators inserted a provision in the state agency’s budget the past two years that requires the state agency to coordinate any cormorant removal program approved by the federal wildlife agency.

In a letter received in early January, the federal agency asked the state agency to show how it decided cormorants were a problem and how culling the cormorant population is expected to, or did, help.

The response from the Department of Natural Resources indicated the evidence of cormorants causing problems was based on observations, not statistical counts. It also noted, as Shipes said, there appeared to be little reduction in the cormorant population as more migrants arrived.

The federal agency decided that was good enough to go ahead with a second year of the program in South Carolina.