Early this spring, hunters killed 11,653 double-crested cormorants on Lakes Marion and Moultrie (Santee Cooper) in South Carolina. Such an event would have been unthinkable just a decade ago. That’s because cormorants are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
But in recent years both federal and state resource managers recognized that these fishing-eating birds are causing problems for our fisheries, as their populations explode. Vocal, angry anglers played no small part in that recognition.
More recently, Florida Fish and Wildlife killed five black bears after a woman was attacked at her home in central Florida.
What do these two incidents have in common? They highlight who we are as a species and what we must do if we are to share land and water with other species.
We are beings who alter our environment to meet our needs. We clear the land to farm and to build cities, homes, and highways. We erect dams to control floods, irrigate formerly arid lands, and generate hydropower.
And when we do those things, we take away the habitat of other species, such as black bears in Florida.
Many think that we manage only domestic animals. In truth, if we are to have healthy populations of most wildlife species, we must manage them as well.
And that means sometimes that we must kill some of them because their numbers are too great to be sustained in their remaining habitat and/or they pose a threat to us.
As they were relentlessly hunted and their habitat destroyed, buffalo, deer, and turkey nearly disappeared. But enlightened management has brought them back, and now regular hunts keep their numbers at sustainable levels for their available habitat.
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