The Double-crested Cormorant: Plight of a Feathered Pariah

An endemic species of North America, the double-crested cormorant is an iridescent black waterbird superbly adapted to catch fish. The first Europeans settlers in North America quickly deemed the double-crested cormorant a competitor for fishing stock and undertook a relentless siege on the birds. This book explores the roots of human-cormorant conflicts, dispels myths about the birds, and offers the first comprehensive assessment of the policies that have been developed to manage the Double-crested cormorant in the twenty-first century. Conservation biologist Linda Wires provides a unique synthesis of the cultural, historical, scientific and political elements of the cormorant’s story. She discusses the amazing late-twentieth-century population recovery, aided by protection policies and environment conservation, but also the subsequent U.S. federal policies under which hundreds of thousands of the birds have been killed. In a critique of the science, management and ethics underlying the double-crested cormorant’s treatment today, Wires exposes “management” as a euphemism for persecution and shows that the current strategies of aggressive predator control are outdated and unsupported by science.