(ON) The Toronto Star- One arm of the Leslie Street Spit, home to Tommy Thompson Park and the Great Lakes’ largest colony of cormorants, looks like a wintry apocalypse. There are no trees now, just a few guano-spattered snags. This is where cormorants first settled in the park in 1990. They now number about 30,000.

In some Ontario parks, Parks Canada officials shoot cormorants to stem the loss of trees. Wildlife defence groups argue about a hierarchy of values in nature: Are trees and the forest canopy more worthy than a colony of cormorants?  More