"Earlier this month, sharpshooters with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services wrapped their annual operation at Leech Lake, the sprawling and legendary fishing Mecca in north central Minnesota. In keeping with past practices, the sharpshooters set their sights on a spit of guano-covered rocks and mostly dead vegetation called Little Pelican Island.

Little Pelican, which is owned by the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, is the site of the state's largest colony of double-crested cormorants. And for the last four years, it has also been ground zero for a burgeoning conflict between the fish-eating birds and fish-loving Minnesotans.

Using .22 caliber rifles equipped with silencers—a tactic accommodated by a recent change in state law designed to help with the effort—the sharpshooters managed to "cull" about 2,500 cormorants between ice-out and early July. That raised the four year kill total of the once-endangered birds to over 11,000.

The action came in response to widespread complaints about the resurgent cormorant population on Leech Lake, which, after a century long absence, grew from under 100 birds to a high of over 10,000 in less than a decade.

At the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, regional fisheries manager Henry Drewes said he is convinced that four years of cormorant control has helped to hasten the remarkable recovery of walleyes and yellow perch numbers at Leech Lake. Both species went into steep declines around the time the cormorant colony on Little Pelican Island was booming."

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Most-hated bird in the world: Sanctioned killing of cormorants continues unabated in Minnesota (MinnPost.Com 7/17)