Cormorants are not very pretty sea birds.

In fact, if you ask me, they are downright homely.

Perhaps that is why, over the years, they have been considered by some to be vermin-like pests up to no good. We have given them uncomplimentary nicknames, from shags to rats with wings.

Cormorant, in French, means sea crows. Even their Latin name has no lyrical ring to it: Phalacrocorax auritus.

According to the Audubon Society, the cormorant is trained in the Orient to catch fish. The Audubon book states: “They feed largely on fish. The cormorant has increased in numbers within the past quarter century.”

That’s putting it mildly.

Cormorants in many areas have taken over, and they poop and plunder with impunity. At a community marina in the Florida Keys where my son-in-law keeps his fishing boat, cormorants in large numbers are making themselves welcome where they are not wanted. Perching on boat rails and trimmed up outboards by the dozens, they leave their calling card on just about everything afloat.

Boat owners curse the cormorants, which defile the boaters’ prized possessions with piles of “shag guano” that sticks to fiberglass boat decks and metal britework like sun-dried concrete. These exasperated boat owners curse more than these ungainly seabirds. They reserve an epithet or two for the Federal Government that over protects these critters, seemingly at all costs.

Fast forward north up the Eastern Seaboard to Downeast Maine.

According to state fisheries biologists along the coast, Maine’s ever-expanding cormorant populations are raising havoc with longstanding efforts to save Atlantic salmon runs on our Downeast rivers. Biologists say that cormorants are the number one predator on Atlantic salmon smolts returning to sea. In fact, six years ago, a number of Washington County citizens with an interest in Atlantic salmon restoration, including state fisheries biologists, testified at a public hearing held by the Feds in support of an aggressive cormorant control program on the Narraguagus River.

So far, little of practical consequence has happened.

In an apparent effort to look accommodating, the federal government (USDA, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service and the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission) has conducted a two year, non-lethal harassment program against the smolt-stealing shags. This program consists of firing non-lethal fireworks and shining bright lights, in hopes of scaring the cormorants into locations away from the river and the migrating salmon smolt. (This may explain the uncommon cormorant numbers around Moosehead Lake).

Where is the common sense?

Sure, there was a day when we plundered our wildlife, with no regard for their place in the scheme of things, but haven’t we gone too far the other way?

I think so.

I think that we have turned the Grand Plan upside down. We are putting the critters first, and man has become the subordinate creature. The only possible explanations for such ill-advised and contradictory federal policies, are bureaucratic ineptness, or a solicitous regard for special interest groups or the political correctness codes of the times.

When you consider the Feds half-hearted attempts to control cormorants, and then listen to their rhetoric about the need to save the endangered Atlantic salmon at all costs, there is reason to question the agencies’ sense of purpose. There is also the issue of public accountability for the wise use of American tax dollars!

On the one hand, the federal government is expending millions of dollars of tax money on Atlantic salmon restoration; on the other, it is refusing to engage in an effective control program on an overpopulated predator that is significantly impeding that salmon restoration.

What a farce!

It makes you wonder what these Federal agencies would do if Boston wharf rats worked their way uptown and began nesting in the cafeteria of their regional headquarters. Try to shoo them across town with squirt guns, strobe lights, and cherry bombs?

The Feds will argue that agency policy requires a two-year, non-lethal harassment program against problem cormorants. After that, under certain conditions, a lethal program can be undertaken.

It has been six years since Downeast leaders pleaded with these attendant agencies for an “aggressive” cormorant control program. Who can blame Washington County folks for growing cynical when it comes to leadership from the national bureaucracy?

This is the same Federal government that has stone-walled Maine’s fast-fading coyote control program, a once-effective predator management project needed to head off Washington County’s dwindling deer herd.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].