MARYLAND DEPARTMENT of Natural Resources (DNR) officials can't tell the difference between a mute swan and a snakehead fish. It claims that both species are invasive and voraciously destroying the biological diversity of our waters, and that the swans' defenders are only swayed by the birds' beauty.
The real difference, though, between the swan and the snakehead -- besides the obvious wings and scales -- is that swans are not having a major impact. Moreover, mute swans are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the International Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds. The federal government has never entered into an international treaty to save snakehead fish, nor has it ever passed a snakehead fish protection act.
It's no wonder, then, that the DNR on May 16 sheepishly surrendered its federal permit to shoot 1,500 mute swans -- roughly half of the state's population -- just three days after the Fund for Animals challenged the killing in U.S. District Court in Washington. It wasn't the birds' beauty that saved them; it was that the DNR had thumbed its nose at both the law and the science.
But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft proposal Wednesday to permit Maryland to resume shooting the swans this year. The decision was part of new regulations published in the Federal Register, and the public has until July 16 to comment.
Although repeatedly referred to as being "overpopulated," the total number of mute swans in Maryland has decreased on its own, from 3,955 in 1999 to 3,624 last year. To put the population of mute swans in perspective, compare it to Maryland's 15,000 tundra swans, 75,000 snow geese and 400,000 Canada geese. How much damage can a small number of mute swans really do?
Not much, according to the DNR's own documents.
The birds are alleged to be threatening "submerged aquatic vegetation" (SAV) in the Chesapeake Bay, yet the DNR's mute swan management plan flatly concedes that the "decline of SAV has been attributed primarily to elevated levels of nutrients and suspended sediments," not to swans.
The DNR said in a letter to the Humane Society of the United States in September that "the bay-wide impacts of the collective Maryland mute swan population are negligible at current numbers," that "mute swans are not the primary cause of the decline of SAV in the Chesapeake Bay" and that the state has not even finished its ongoing scientific research to "quantify mute swan impacts on SAV in the Chesapeake Bay."
