Sponsors (4)
The bill makes it easier and more certain for fisheries and aquaculture managers to control double‑crested cormorants to protect fish stocks and reduce regulatory burden, but it increases risks of greater bird mortality, potential conflicts with conservation goals and the public, and creates oversight and data‑quality challenges for wildlife management.
Aquaculture operators, lake and pond managers can legally remove double‑crested cormorants under a renewed depredation order, reducing bird predation losses to stocked and commercial fish.
State and local fishery and wildlife managers in additional listed States gain clearer legal authority to conduct cormorant control, reducing uncertainty about permissible actions across jurisdictions.
Regulated entities and agencies face reduced administrative burden due to modernized terminology and simplified recordkeeping requirements, lowering compliance costs and paperwork.
Rural communities and wildlife could experience increased cormorant mortality and reduced protections from a broadly authorized, longer‑term depredation order, risking negative impacts on cormorant populations and public opposition.
Expanded control authority may conflict with state wildlife conservation goals and provoke public or stakeholder opposition in local communities.
Greater operational flexibility for managers could create enforcement and oversight challenges for USFWS and state agencies, increasing monitoring and compliance costs and complicating consistent application of the order.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Reissues and expands a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service cormorant depredation order to more states, adds lake/pond managers, modernizes recordkeeping, removes an expiration date, and requires 5‑year renewals.
Reissues and updates an existing U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service depredation order that allows control of double‑crested cormorants at aquaculture operations. The reissued order expands the list of states where the order applies, adds lake managers and pond managers as covered entities, modernizes recordkeeping and compliance language, removes a prior expiration date, and requires renewal at least every five years. The bill preserves existing legal obligations under NEPA and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and directs the Interior Secretary to include additional states or territories if appropriate. It makes regulatory changes to how the depredation order is applied and maintained but does not appropriate new funds or waive environmental or wildlife‑protection requirements.
Official title: Cormorant Relief Act of 2025
Introduced March 24, 2025 by Mike Ezell · Last progress December 10, 2025