WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford introduced legislation Monday that would allow aquaculture producers to kill a migratory bird that feasts on Arkansas catfish.
The Jonesboro Republican is calling his bill the Safeguard Aquaculture Farmers Act.
For years, fish farmers in several states had been authorized to shoot double-crested cormorants to keep them from preying on catfish fingerlings -- young fish so called because they're about the size of a human finger.
But a judge last year blocked a pair of orders from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that had allowed for the birds to be killed.
Federal Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the depredation orders violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
Since then, the program has been on hold.
Crawford introduced a bill in December to allow the shootings to resume, but the bill must be refiled now that a new session of Congress has begun.
The birds are bad news, according to Crawford.
"They are predators and they can really thin out a pond really quickly," Crawford said.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, who sponsored similar legislation last year, agrees. The Dardanelle Republican said he is working with senators from Mississippi -- another major catfish-farming state -- to address the issue on his side of the Capitol.
"We're trying to move on this as quickly as we can with the new administration because this is not something that can wait," he said Monday.
When cormorants fly south towards the ocean or north towards the Great Lakes, they pause in Arkansas and fill up on fish.
"I'll tell you, it's a smorgasbord for them," said Bo Collins, executive director of the Catfish Farmers of Arkansas. "The smaller fish is what they prefer."
Brad Graham, a farmer in Portland with 475 acres of ponds, said Monday he spends tens of thousands of dollars trying to protect his fish from cormorants.
The bill just for shotgun shells is $15,000 to $20,000, he estimated.
With the killings halted, "all we can do now is shoot up in the air," he said.
Graham said he's rooting for Crawford's legislation. "We really need this to get passed," he said.
Efforts to resume the shootings will face opposition, according to Julie Woodyer of Cormorant Defenders International, a Toronto-based organization that opposes culling the birds, which were brought to near extinction decades ago by the pesticide DDT.
She says the birds are "magnificently beautiful."
"I've had the opportunity to watch colonies of cormorants from boats on islands out in the Great Lakes, and I can tell you they're incredibly hard working [and] they are fantastic parents," Woodyer added.
Shooting them, she said, is "horribly inhumane."
Business on 01/10/2017