Canton of Bern wants to kill up to 100 cormorants
To protect the grayling spawning grounds near the Schadau in Thun, the Canton of Bern intends to shoot up to 100 cormorants in the coming years. This was announced in the official gazette.
The cormorants are to be shot by wildlife protection officers, with a maximum of 20 birds per year.
The first such deterrence operation is planned for early January 2025. It is scheduled to last until 31 March.
The canton's justification
The canton justifies the measure by pointing out that stocks of the grayling, a species classified as endangered, have been declining for years. Grayling are part of the cormorant's diet. Cormorants have already been shot in Thun for several years to protect the threatened fish. Recreational hunting as population control remains scientifically controversial.
BirdLife: Treating the symptoms
Claudia Kuhnert, head of the secretariat of the bird protection association BirdLife Bern, is critical of the deterrence operation. She considers it to be treating the symptoms.
«The grayling in Switzerland is threatened by the destruction of habitats, deteriorating water quality and migration barriers,» Kuhnert is quoted as saying in the Bern Tamedia newspapers on Friday.
The biggest problem for the fish, she said, is excessively high water temperatures in summer due to climate change. The removal of grayling by sport fishing and by the cormorant are «further influencing factors among many,» Kuhnert adds. Meanwhile, far too little is still being done to protect biodiversity and habitats.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier The Role and Criticism of Recreational Hunters we shed light on the training, power and self-image of recreational hunters. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
