Last September, I was driving past Cedar Pond off Route 6 in Orleans. Roosting contentedly on the overhead electric wires were dozens of cormorants. As they digested their evening meals they pooped with gusto into the pond below. The small body of water was effectively dead.
There are many reasons our water resources are in trouble. Nitrates and phosphates have done their job. Road runoff and acid rain are also factors. But animal waste is a growing problem, and the fact that cormorants, like Canada geese and seals, are protected animals makes it increasingly difficult to maintain a healthy and balanced ecosystem.
A half-century ago, there were a lot of hunters on the Cape. Many fathers of kids I grew up with took a deer in season — or out of season, if the need to put food on the table was critical. People hunted pheasants and ducks, and there were bounties on animals that were considered economic and biological threats. Culling wild animals was an accepted practice and made for a balance that benefited everyone.
Today some species have proliferated to the point where they've become not only a nuisance, but a real danger to the health of the human population of Cape Cod.
Everyone thinks it is cute to have a couple of deer in the backyard. But the explosion of the deer population on the Cape and Islands, unchecked by anything but hard winters, comes with some unanticipated consequences. Deer carry ticks. Ticks are the source of a growing Lyme disease problem. The more deer, the more Lyme disease.
People who use local golf courses and athletic fields are well aware that Canada geese foul these open spaces with their droppings. They are protected by the Migratory Bird Act. As their populations multiply, pollution stemming from these nonmigrating birds has affected water quality in our estuaries, ponds and lakes. They decimate shellfish beds and damage cranberry bogs. The swan is another bird that has proliferated beyond what many consider healthy levels.
Since coming under the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, seals have increased their numbers from barely 1,000 to nearly 15,000 in the waters around the Cape and Islands. Again, as with the geese, what goes in comes out. When bacterial counts along our beaches reach levels that force closings, it's not just overburdened septic systems. A significant factor is the fecal waste emanating from large concentrations of seals.
A recent Time magazine article noted that Americans today live in closer proximity to wild animals than any other generation in more than a century. In the future we can expect to see animals that were once thought to live far away from us coming our way.
The wayward black bear that rambled out to Provincetown in 2012 is an example. The sighting of a bobcat in Falmouth this past summer is another. They've got a possible mountain lion running loose in Winchester. The rapid rise of the local turkey population is already causing some concern. Beavers, once hunted to extinction, are now common in central and Western Massachusetts. Should they arrive on Cape Cod they will do considerable damage, as they have in other communities. Under state law, a homeowner has to hire a licensed beaver trapper to get rid of them.
I like animals. I'd be hard pressed to hurt any living thing, and I'm not in favor of eliminating any particular animal. But there is a reason we haven't encouraged the reintroduction of mountain lions and wolves back to this area. And killing wild creatures that are already here doesn't have to be the answer. A reasonable and humane policy of controlling wild animals — perhaps by habitat modification, site-aversion methods or neutering the population of potentially harmful critters — needs to be placed on the county and state legislative agendas.
Jim Coogan is a Cape Cod Times columnist. His column runs every other Tuesday. Email him at email@example.com or check in with him by reading his blog at capecodonline.com.