The great cormorant has had a good run.
Driven to the brink of extinction by hunters and pesticides in the 1970s, the fish-eating waterbird was rescued thanks to one of the EU’s earliest environmental laws. On paper, that regulation represents a triumph for conservationists: Over the past 50 years, the cormorant population has grown from roughly 50,000 birds to between 1.5 million and 2 million across Europe.
But 10 EU countries now consider the aquatic species a menace that needs to be contained.
The demand comes in a joint letter to Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall and Fisheries Commissioner Costas Kadis, seen exclusively by POLITICO. Sixteen agriculture and environment ministers from Estonia, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania want the cormorant added to the list of huntable species under the EU’s flagship nature law, the 1979 Birds Directive.
