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The . Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) labeled the incident a "brazen act of environmental terrorism." But others called the vigilante action a long-overdue management measure to protect smallmouth bass and other gamefish that the agency itself should have undertaken years earlier.

"Cormorants have no natural predators so the population has exploded since the DDT ban and that's having devastating effects on the natural system," reports Dan Thomas, president of the Great Lakes Sport Fishing Council. "All cormorants eat is fish and they are voracious feeders. But they also crowd out desirable water birds from nesting sites and destroy natural vegetation wherever they roost."

Thomas, who has been crusading for cormorant control on the Great Lakes for at least four years, says Little Galloo is now a guano-encrusted wasteland.

"All the Fish and Wildlife Service had to do was allow the population to be thinned out and it's a shame it had to come to this before any action was taken," Thomas says.

Twenty-five years ago, the island had 22 nesting pairs of double-crested cormorants, according to USFWS statistics, but by 1996, the count had grown to 8,410 pairs. The birds breed at age three and can live 20 years. The Great Lakes region has experienced a 29% average increase in breeding pairs every year since 1970.

The . population is estimated at 2 million of the long-necked fish-nappers which consume up to a pound-and-a-half of fish daily. For that reason they are the bane of farm-pond aquaculturists in the South. But there, to mitigate economic losses to an industry, USFWS issues permits for "lethal control measures" -- catfish farmers can shoot the birds.

In natural systems like the Great Lakes, however, biologists disagreed with anglers that the birds can eat enough fish to affect a population. But men like Henderson Harbor's Capt. Mitch Franz, one of the convicted shooters, have been reporting for years what they'd seen every day: more birds in the air, less fish on the stringers and fewer anglers in town.

Eating Up an industry

Little Galloo lies in eastern Lake Ontario about 10 miles, as the cormorant flies, from Henderson Harbor, a resort town of 1,200 where the economy turns on sportfishing. In season, fishing can swell the population to 10,000 and Franz operates one of about 40 charter boats there.

In Henderson Harbor, according to outdoor writer Tony Zappia, cormorants are viewed as a threat to more than the fish; they are eating up an industry. Zappia covers Lake Ontario fishing for the Watertown Daily Times and he says Franz and his accomplices are local heroes.

To show support and raise money for their case, the business community hosted fund-raising dinners last summer and donated merchandise for raffles. And businesses in town still sell T-shirts, hats, decals and buttons for the cause.

"Frankly, the Department of Environmental Conservation has dragged its feet on this issue and what the anglers did was in direct response to that inaction," Zappia says.

The DEC began tracking nesting in the mid-1980s and in 1992 did remove nests from islands in Lake Oneida, 40 miles south of Henderson Bay. But there the issue was competition with the common tern, a threatened species.

In 1994, DEC crews destroyed nests on two islands near Little Galloo "to reduce competition [with] black-crowned night herons and prevent habitat degradation." DEC studies of cormorant food habits, released in 1997, confirmed anglers' claims. But, Franz says, nothing was done.

At a public hearing that fall in Syracuse, 400 people showed up but, Franz says, the DEC did not. However, the USFWS regional office in Massachusetts sent two biologists. According to Franz, who was there, one made a statement to the effect that if cormorants are eating so many fish, the anglers' harvest should be cut, presumably to keep the birds well-fed.

"That's what loaded the gun," Franz now says.

Shoot, Shovel and Shut up

Franz, reached for comment at the New York National Boat Show in January, said that while trout and salmon charters are his bread and butter, he's concerned about the smallmouth bass fishery, too.

"I do a lot of boat and outdoor shows for my charter business and, more and more, people would see I'm from Henderson Harbor and they'd ask, 'What's happened to your bass fishery?' Fishing is a $30-million-a-year business in Jefferson County and if people aren't taking home their limit, my neighbors aren't booking charters, the shops aren't selling bait and the marinas aren't gassing up the private boats."

This year at the New York show, Franz says, when people saw "Henderson Harbor" on his display or the Concerned Citizens for Cormorant Control button on his hat, they would ask if he was "one of the guys that shot those birds."

"I tell 'em, 'Yes, and if you've got a minute, I'll tell you why,'" Franz says. Some listen; others don't.

"I'm not ashamed of what we did," Franz explains. "We wanted them [DEC] to know there was a group fed-up enough to resort to civil disobedience. They say the incident had no effect but we know it got their attention."

Five months after the shootings, DEC studies confirmed that the birds' feeding habits were, indeed, depressing smallmouth bass stocks.

"For the first time we could solidly link cormorants to the decline of smallmouth bass in the eastern basin," reports Albert Schiavone, DEC regional fisheries manager. "These studies confirmed that the birds were eating over one million bass annually."

Last year DEC agreed to cut the population to 1,200 nesting pairs by coating eggs with vegetable oil which suffocates the embryos, destroying nests and possibly shooting as many as 300 adults. While that may be too little, too late for some anglers, Schiavone says the perpetrators in the great cormorant killings may have shot themselves in the foot.

"The shootings elevated a local problem to a national problem," Schiavone says. "Now the animal rights people and those who don't want any controls on wildlife at all are very aware [of] this case. Whatever happens here will set the precedent for management elsewhere and that's probably why the 'anti's' are watching us so hard."

They Shoot Ducks, Don't They?

Nonetheless, the incident, as well as increasing complaints about cormorants gobbling up gamefish in western Lake Erie, Green Bay on Lake Michigan, the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior as well as on Lake Champlain and even on Cape Cod, has brought the issue home to roost in Washington, DC.

Late last year, USEWS announced its intent to develop a national management plan for the birds. And Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), whose district includes Henderson Harbor, introduced a bill in Congress last October to allow cormorant hunting although one ornithologist says that's a poor control measure.

Dr. Lee Harper, director of the St. Lawrence Bird Observatory who has studied cormorants for years, says the birds aren't edible, fly too far from shore to shoot and "don't decoy well, like ducks and geese do."

"If we shot every cormorant on Little Galloo Island, it won't bring the bass back anyway," says Harper. "If that could restore the fishery and revive the fishing economy, I'd be in favor of it," adds Harper who is an avid duck hunter and sportfisherman. "But Lake Ontario has undergone dramatic changes in the last 20 years that are at the root of this situation.

"The one piece of the puzzle that we can see flying by our docks every day, that's the piece we think we can do something about," Harper reports. "But local controls just drive the birds elsewhere and now the largest cormorant colony on the Great Lakes is in Canada."

Unless the province of Ontario buys into controls, nothing will change, Harper says. But the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources blames other factors for the dive in bass stocks and its studies show the population may be poised for a comeback, anyway.

Be that as it may, all parties agree the double-crested cormorant is taking a double helping of smallmouth bass in Lake Ontario. But Franz points to the 50-year cooperation between the . and Canada to keep the parasitic sea lamprey from wiping out other Great Lakes fish and the millions of dollars USFWS spends annually to do it.

All he wants is a few bucks for the birds, too.