Resolution On Cormorants

Original Text

Resolution On Cormorants

The European Anglers Alliance, representing 16 European nations and over 5 million anglers, held its 7^th General Assembly on the 31 March and 1 April 2001 in Paris France.

The European Anglers Alliance acknowledges the adverse impacts of cormorants on fisheries throughout Europe. We acknowledge the particular problems in some Eastern European Countries where cormorants do not breed but where immigration of birds in winter has led to significant damage to fisheries.

The European Anglers Alliance concludes:

1. Shooting and scaring cormorants in different countries of Europe had failed to reduce the population of cormorants because the principle breeding colonies are in other neighbouring countries;
2. The cormorant population in the whole of Europe is on the increase;
3. For example: increasing numbers of cormorants from eastern populations migrates as winter visitors to the countries Germany, Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary and Austria;
4. For example: the coarse fish stocks in the Austrian part of Danube are seriously threatened due to the cormorants voracious appetite;
5. Therefore the cormorants have a disastrous impact on a whole ecosystem;
6. Especially by dealing with the cormorants at their main breeding colonies in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and other countries this problem can be solved.

These problems are parallel in the rest of Europe

The European Anglers Alliance urges all members to ask their governments and the European Union to urgently pursue all possible methods of control at breeding sites. The European Anglers Alliance stresses the need to institute a pan-European management plan for cormorants.