Hi Lee up to a point it might well be. None lethal means is a precursor to lethal and to show you have tried to rid yourself (your water) now catchment of the problem. Which in turn creates a problem elsewhere. As the birds have wings, a point NE don't seem to have grasped. Dead cormorants though don't fly anywhere
As part of the role, the 3 guys I think is to convince the club doing nowt about it and there's lots of them, that by joining with others (the proactive) their waters will get protection if lethal force is used. But to get there they'll have to do the hoop jumping first.
The Trent Valley mid and lower is a bit of an anomaly with its stock levels and number of birds. As to why this should be I don’t have an answer for.
What I can say with some confidence is the upper and tributaries are suffering quite badly from predation by them. There’s very poor small/medium sized silver fish stocks in them. Likewise it’s the same story on many of the stillwaters on the tribs and upper river.
That’s not good news from a sustainable river’s point of view over the long-term as it will over time impact on all the river.
Let me share two case studies I know of on two stillwaters in the NW. Both reservoirs. One was 50 + acres the other 7. The resers were drained down for essential work to be done to less than a metre deep and what fish in them were removed either by the EA fisheries team or professional private fisheries teams.
The big Reser which had up and until the cormorants arrived in the late 80s been noted as one of the best match water in the NW. Even in the depth of winter you need 10-15 lb of silvers to frame in the match, which were large opens, 100 peggers.
On netting it fully they got out of 1700 lb of fish, mainly large cormorant proof bream and hybrids. The numbers of small silvers was estimated to be around 300lbs. This reser is biologically quite rich and easily capable of support under normal conditions 300-450 lb of fish per acre. Based on the lower figure of 300 the water should have produced 15,000 lbs of fish right throughout the size range. What is quite clear is that through cormorant predation over the last 30 years they have suppressed the stock level down to 34 lb per acre.
The smaller reser as I said was also drained down and netted and out of that the figure was 900lbs of fish. What’s interesting about this one is the controlling club only 3 years before stocked 1000 lb of medium sized roach in it. Again the numbers of small silvers were very low when it was netted, as were the quantities of roach over all. Given this water had measures to keep cormorants off, which weren’t wholly successful and its fertility isn’t quite as high as the bigger one, it should have produced around twice the amount of fish it did.
So if anyone else can supply me with reliable figures of other waters where the same process; draining, netting and the known quantity of fish removed, I'd like to know about it.