Source: Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK
Cormorant numbers across Europe have been increasing, particularly within the last three decades, for a range of reasons including protection from persecution, the effect of improved food sources, for example as a result of nutrient enrichment and fish farms, and changes in pollution levels.
However, the enlarged cormorant populations have led to significant conflicts in many parts of Europe with recreational and commercial fisheries, and fish farms. For this reason, an interdisciplinary network of almost 70 researchers from 30 countries contributed to the ‘INTERCAFE: Interdisciplinary Initiative to Reduce Pan-European Cormorant-Fisheries Conflicts’ project which was funded through the EU COST Action programme.
INTERCAFE was chaired by David Carss, a vertebrate ecologist from the UK’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and drew together researchers from a number of disciplines, including bird-related and broader ecology disciplines, fisheries science and management, sociology, social anthropology and international law, together with experts on fisheries production, harvest and management, local interest groups and international policy-makers.
The INTERCAFE final reports give fisheries managers, conservationists, researchers and decision-makers scientific data and wide-ranging information on the key factors influencing cormorant ecology and cormorant movements throughout the year at the European scale. They also provide a wealth of experiences, as well as practical measures and options for considering and addressing cormorant-fishery issues across Europe from ecological, social, cultural and legal perspectives.
There are five main reports from the project which cover:
• A synthesis on cormorant ecology within Europe, including the first pan-European census of the number and distribution of cormorants in summer and wintertime
• An overview of field techniques and standard research methods for cormorants, fishes and the interactions between them
• An overview of available management techniques – a ‘Toolbox’ covering methods for reducing cormorant problems at European fisheries
• Analysis of cormorant-fisheries conflicts at carp-rearing ponds – an important freshwater fishery sector across continental Europe – where problems at individual sites can be caused by birds which breed as far as 2000 km away
• An in-depth, underpinning exploration of many of the social, cultural and legal perspectives embedded in cormorant-fisheries conflicts
The reports are free to download from the INTERCAFE website HERE
