From Mark Valentine

The Government has ordered the killing of at least one in ten British cormorants, in defiance of its own scientists’ advice, to appease anglers and fish farms who say the dark bird is stealing too much of their quarry. Amongst the arguments advanced by anglers for the cull were that "in the Bible, cormorants are described as an abomination, so we have God on our side!" and "the cormorant does not respect fishing club boundaries".
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The cormorant, black, sleek and sharp-winged, has long been seen as sinister and free-spirited, and identified with the occult. Milton’s Satan, in Paradise Lost, is depicted as a cormorant when he perches upon the Tree of Life to contemplate Eden. Pagan author Llewelyn Powys was a keen votary of the bird, and in his Glory of Life (1938) memorably evoked a colony upon the Dorset shore: "The damp white cliffs above the deserted sea-washed beaches are set with small images, images of satanic saints, each in its Parian niche...cormorants roosting, cormorants dozing in the twilight, cormorants dreaming of diving feats through dark waters in the wake of white flickering fish..."

Under the announcement, sneaked out last week, at least 1,800 and up to 3,000 of the cormorants, normally protected by wildlife laws, can be shot each year: the total population is currently only 17,000. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is strongly opposed to the move, and believes more humane deterrents against cormorants around inland fishing sites have not been properly tried.

If you’d like to defend one of Britain’s ancient totemic birds, write to Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw to object, and invoke Freedom of Information laws to demand to see why he over-ruled his own scientific advisers and ordered the mass shooting (nothing to do with anglers’ votes, presumably...).

Footnotes

The RSPB concerns are summarised briefly <a href="http://www.rspb.org.uk/policy/wildbirdslaw/1in10shot.asp" target="new">here</a>

Contact Ben Bradshaw <a href="http://www.benbradshaw.co.uk/contact/contact.php" target="new">here</a>

The anglers’ arguments are set out here <a href="http://www.cormorantbusters.co.uk" target="new">here</a>, together with pictures of dead cormorants.