The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is denying last-ditch attempts by Arkansas fish farmers to obtain individual permits that would allow them to kill limited numbers of double-crested cormorants this winter.
Mike Freeze, owner of the 1,000-acre Keo Fish Farm in Lonoke County, said Tuesday that he has been informed by the federal agency that its lawyers are against approving any of the permits to kill the fish-eating birds. "Farmers are going to be paying the price for the wildlife service's errors," Freeze said.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, a part of the federal Interior Department, lost a federal lawsuit this spring over the issuance of "depredation permits" allowing fish farmers or wildlife-management officials to kill cormorants deemed a threat to the aquaculture industry or to public resources. That permit differs from the individual permit known as a Form 37.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ruled in Washington, D.C., that the agency had violated the National Environmental Protection Act in how it reached its environmental assessment that said killing a limited number of cormorants would not harm its nationwide population. The bird is protected to some extent under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
The agency relied on data from its 2009 environmental assessment for the 2014 assessment, Bates ruled, rejecting claims by the agency that it was understaffed and underfunded when it failed to conduct a fuller, up-to-date assessment. The judge, however, said the agency could consider, on a case-by-case basis, issuing the individual Form 37 permits allowing fish farmers to kill a set number of the birds. The Form 37s were not part of the lawsuit filed by a watchdog group of retired and current federal employees called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Officials at the wildlife service's Migratory Bird Permit Office in Atlanta, which accepted farmers' Form 37 applications, didn't return telephone calls seeking comment.
Arkansas exports more than 6 billion bait fish nationwide each year -- some 80 percent of the U.S. market -- as part of the state's overall $170 million aquaculture industry. Arkansas also leads the nation in production of largemouth bass for stocker fish, hybrid striped bass fry and Chinese carp, according to the state Department of Agriculture.
Bait fish and catfish farmers in the South dread the return every winter of double-crested cormorants, which can eat up to 1 pound of fish per day. Killing a few cormorants reinforces nonlethal tools, such as propane cannons, to scare birds away, Freeze and other farmers said.
Freeze said he understood that the Atlanta officials were prepared to approve at least some of the Form 37 applications but were dissuaded by agency lawyers in Washington. Freeze said he was told that devising a new environmental assessment or the even more-detailed environmental impact statement would take the agency at least three months.
"What is so frustrating is that it's already been seven months almost since they lost the lawsuit, and the judge gave the agency other options," Freeze said. "We're saying, 'Why don't you even try [the Form 37s]?"
Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, has said the group has no objection to Form 37 applications but cautioned they should be issued on "actual harm, not on harm assumed that will happen months from now."
"This leaves us in a pretty difficult position," said David Dunn, owner of Dunn's Fish Farms, which raises largemouth bass on 950 acres of ponds south of Brinkley. "We have a tremendous amount of money invested in our inventory. It's all outdoors, and we're vulnerable to a lot of predators, but the double-crested cormorants are the worst offenders."
Dunn said he can expect to lose 20 percent of his inventory each year to predators, "and that's when we're able to exercise some control" over the birds. "Our future as an industry is definitely into question," he said.
More than 100 double-crested cormorants flocked around one of his ponds Monday, Dunn said. "Without a lethal tool in the arsenal, we'll be left with driving along the levees, honking our horns and throwing rocks at them," he said. "And, after two weeks, they will ignore even that."
Margie Saul, co-owner of the Harry Saul Minnow Farm just outside DeValls Bluff, said she has received neither confirmation nor denial of her Form 37 application. "It doesn't sound promising," she said. "It's scary, because once they get here, there's nothing to push them away. They will just gorge on our ponds."
Thurman Booth, state director of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, helped 26 fish farmers file the emergency applications to the Fish and Wildlife Service and recommended their approval. The applications asked for permission to kill a total of 7,108 double-crested cormorants, he said.
Meanwhile, the Fish and Wildlife Service has approved applications by 20 owners of private lakes in Arkansas to kill nearly 3,900 double-crested cormorants to protect sport fish, Booth said. While those permits weren't part of the lawsuit lost by the Fish and Wildlife Service, their approval "appears to be an anomaly, an oversight," Booth said. "It just doesn't make sense to approve those but not others," he said.
"I think all this will be resolved, but I think it will be resolved politically, not biologically," Booth said.
Business on 10/19/2016