Ocean Sentry
One obvious change in Finland’s coastal scene has been the sudden reappearance of cormorants, hundreds of years after they were hunted into local extinction. Since the first birds bred in Finland again in 1996, their numbers have shot up to 16,000 pairs.
But these large, black, fish-eating birds are widely despised among residents and people who holiday in the archipelago region. This summer 2,700 cormorant nests were illegally destroyed, along with an estimated 10,000 eggs or fledglings.
Hunting has now been permitted in the Åland Islands, and pressure groups in coastal regions are urging the government to permit cormorant hunting more widely… Read Full Article by Jorma Tenovuo
