{"id":295565,"date":"2025-11-16T18:23:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T18:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/295565\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T18:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T18:23:09","slug":"cormorants-and-their-acidic-poop-are-causing-a-stink-on-toronto-islands-what-can-be-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/295565\/","title":{"rendered":"Cormorants and their acidic poop are causing a stink on Toronto islands. What can be done?"},"content":{"rendered":"

LISTEN | Are they pests that need to be reigned in, or key players in habitats that need to be preserved?:<\/p>\n

The Sunday Magazine24:15Sunday Documentary: The Cormorant Conundrum<\/p>\n

It\u2019s safe to say that double-crested cormorants are causing a stink \u2014 in more ways than one \u2014 on the Toronto islands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They poop everywhere, which is driving people away. And since that poop is acidic, it\u2019s also bleaching and destroying the trees they nest in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRome is burning, and the bureaucrats are fiddling. Each year it gets worse and worse, with more carnage and death to the trees,\u201d said Warren Hoselton, who worked on the islands as the park supervisor for over two decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe manage Canada geese, we manage beavers \u2014 and we’re letting these guys have at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around 18,000 double-crested cormorants have made Hanlan’s Point their home, close to a public docking area. The population has tripled in size over the last year, according to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA).<\/p>\n

Those who live and spend time on the islands want them relocated. But that\u2019s not as easy as it sounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s so bad about these birds?<\/p>\n

The bird poop \u2014 called guano \u2014 is responsible for turning what was a tree-filled, green shore line into something you might see in a dystopian film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And in this one, the cormorants are the villains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s hard not to describe it as an apocalyptic scene for a forest,\u201d said Gordon Ballantyne, the general manager at the Toronto Island Marina.<\/p>\n

\"AWarren Honselton says not enough is being done to get rid of the cormorants on Toronto islands, which are wreaking havoc on the trees they nest in. (John Chipman\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Ballantyne says he used to see up to 140 boats tied up along the public docking at Hanlan\u2019s Point on a long weekend. But that has significantly dropped, thanks to the cormorants doing their business.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople go to bed, they wake up and their boat is covered in, uh, in what the cormorants are dropping,\u201d said Ballantyne.<\/p>\n

What is their origin story?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s believed that the cormorants came from another colony, which lives just a short flap of the wings away at Tommy Thompson Park on Toronto\u2019s mainland, just east of the islands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the TRCA can\u2019t be sure, the arrival of the Toronto islands contingent in 2022 coincided with a population drop at Tommy Thompson Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The group says some of the birds may have relocated because on the mainland, there are more predators who consider a cormorant nest of chicks a tasty midnight meal. <\/p>\n

\"AThis shows the cormorant population that lives at Tommy Thompson Park in 2025. (Submitted by Gail Fraser)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe raccoons, when they come into the colony, they don’t grab a bird and then take it out of the nesting area. They just sit at the nest and eat the chick,\u201d said Gail Fraser, an avian ecologist at York University who monitors the colony at Tommy Thompson Park.<\/p>\n

That stress, she says, could be why cormorants are moving away.<\/p>\n

What can be done?<\/p>\n

In some places across Canada, including in Ontario, cormorants can be culled<\/a>. But because this flock resides in Toronto city limits, a bylaw protects them from being shot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The TRCA, working on behalf of the City of Toronto, has been managing the roughly 30,000 birds at Tommy Thompson Park.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s willing to let nature decide the size of the colony, but what it doesn\u2019t want is cormorants nesting in trees, because their poop is so destructive. Since the birds don\u2019t mind nesting on the ground, the TRCA has to convince them to leave their branches and do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that takes a lot of convincing. During its seven-week breeding season in the spring, staff spend hours yelling up at the cormorants, trying to get them to leave their nests. When that no longer works, they use pyrotechnics to scare the birds away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you’re in the middle of the season and the weather is bad, it’s raining and \u2026 you’re standing under the cormorants and they are pooping and regurgitating fish all over you, it is a mess,\u201d said Andrea Chreston, a senior project manager with the TRCA.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Ontario\u2019s cormorant hunt begins amid opposition from biologists, locals:\"\"<\/p>\n

Ontario\u2019s cormorant hunt begins amid opposition from biologists, locals<\/p>\n

Conservation groups near Big Rideau Lake say hunting the area\u2019s native shore birds is unethical and unnecessary. But starting Sept. 15, hunters are allowed to kill up to 15 a day. The CBC\u2019s Stu Mills reports.<\/p>\n

Then, they poke the nests out of the trees, which are 80 to 100 feet high. But that isn\u2019t always a permanent fix.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it’s not only physically demanding, but it is emotionally demoralizing,\u201d said Chreston.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re like, \u2018Yes, I’ve removed this many nests on any given day.\u2019 And then you come back the next day and the birds have rebuilt their nests. So you’re constantly having to redo the very hard work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it has been successful. According to the TRCA, just 15 per cent of the colony at Tommy Thompson Park\u00a0was nesting on the ground in 2008. By 2024, that was up to 90 per cent. <\/p>\n

Why protect cormorants?<\/p>\n

Not everyone sees the cormorant as a feathered villain. For one, they are native to the area, not invasive.<\/p>\n

Chreston says that though they have a reputation for devouring fish, according to research done in the U.S. in 2003<\/a>, the birds don\u2019t actually hurt the overall stocks.<\/p>\n

And Fraser says it\u2019s important to recognize that while the cormorants have done a number on trees in the area, they aren\u2019t the harbingers of death they appear to be.<\/p>\n

\"AThis wooden structure at Tommy Thompson Park, considered a cormorant condo, provides space for birds the TRCA hopes to entice back to the park (John Chipman\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Yes, their poop is responsible for destroying forests. But Fraser says it\u2019s not habitat loss. It\u2019s habitat transformation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLosing habitat is when you build a parking lot and build a Home Depot, right? That’s losing habitat,\u201d said Fraser.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we’re standing was forest at one point. And now, ring-billed gulls can nest on the ground here because it’s no longer a forest. So it just creates habitat for other species.\u201d<\/p>\n

Possible solutions<\/p>\n

Chreston says the TRCA has been applying some of the same tactics on the Toronto islands as it has at Tommy Thompson Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But on the islands, the entire colony nests in trees, and since there\u2019s no space for them to nest on the ground without first killing trees, all the TRCA can do is try to get them to leave. During the breeding season, Chreston and her team work from morning to evening, every day, trying to scare the birds off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The TRCA is trying to lure the cormorants to Tommy Thompson Park with what they call cormorant condos \u2014 basically, a wall-less wooden structure equipped with predator protection, to try to keep hungry raccoons away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

TRCA field staff have been knocking down cormorant nests on the islands, too. And Chreston says for a few years, the population was dropping. But then in 2024, eagles nested in the midst of the cormorant colony, making it a protected zone. <\/p>\n

\"ManyWhat used to be a forest at Tommy Thompson Park is now a nest for cormorants, but more are making their way to the islands. (John Chipman\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Chreston and her staff could no longer harass cormorants or knock down their nests in the area directly around the eagles, and the cormorants flocked to it. The population jumped back up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fraser supports the work the TRCA is doing. She says it\u2019s more humane than many other places across Canada that have chosen to kill the birds.<\/p>\n

But she has another idea. She suggests an entirely new place for the cormorants to rest: a bird barge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

About 30 years ago, the City of Hamilton built three islands to solve its own bird problem, which cost $2.4 million, and proved to be effective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The TRCA is \u201cin the early stages of investigating\u201d a floating habitat, according to Chreston. She says they are constantly adapting their management plan, but it will take years before they can move all the cormorants.<\/p>\n

\"TwigsDecades ago, Hamilton created man-made islands for birds to nest on. Gail Fraser thinks a similar project could be the solution for the Toronto cormorants. (John Chipman\/CBC)<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause our landscapes are so altered by human practices, there’s limited nature left,\u201d said Chreston.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why she wants them to move to Tommy Thompson Park, \u201cwhere there’s ample habitat and good habitat for them. Where they’re not going to be further decreasing overall biodiversity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LISTEN | Are they pests that need to be reigned in, or key players in habitats that need…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-295565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}