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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Stuttgart, Arkansas » Harry K. Dupree Stuttgart National Aquaculture Research Cntr » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #125747
Title: "CORMORANT SUMMER MOVEMENTS AFTER MIGRATING FROM SOUTHERN AQUACULTURE".

Author
item WERNER, SCOTT - USDA/APHIS/NWRC
item KING, D. - USDA/APHIS/NWRC
item Radomski, Andrew

Submitted to: The Catfish Journal
Publication Type: Popular Publication
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/25/2001
Publication Date: 11/21/2001
Citation: WERNER, S.J., KING, D.T., RADOMSKI, A.A. "CORMORANT SUMMER MOVEMENTS AFTER MIGRATING FROM SOUTHERN AQUACULTURE".. THE CATFISH JOURNAL. 2001. p.4.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: In cooperation with biologists from USDA'S Wildlife Services programs in AL, AR, LA, and MS, researchers from the National Wildlife Research Center captured 50 cormorants from November 1999 through March 2001, and installed satellite transmitters to determine where individuals move during winter, where they breed in spring, and the paths of their migration from their wintering areas near southeastern catfish farms to their traditional breeding areas in the Great Lakes Region of the United States and Canada. We monitored the northward migration of cormorants from March through June 2000. Based on preliminary data analyses, cormorants captured in Chicot County, AR last winter occupied southwestern Ontario, near Lake of the Woods, from May through September 2000. This study has definitively determined that cormorants captured near southeastern catfish farms breed from southern Manitoba to western New York. Based on North American cormorant biology, and if management activities are authorized following the EIS process, cormorant populations and their breeding distribution could be most effectively managed via colony-specific reproductive controls (e.g. culling of breeding adults, nest destruction, egg oiling, culling of nestlings) and/or culling of adults near sites of reported depredation. Subsequent analyses of these data will enable us to determine the spring and fall migratory paths, breeding distributions, and winter movements of cormorants from November 1999 through March 2002.