Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of cormorant predation on fish stocks and biodiversity.

This is a devolved matter and the information provided relates to England only.

While the Government recognises the impact that cormorants can have on native fish stocks, it has not made a recent formal assessment of cormorant predation on them or wider biodiversity. Many factors are responsible for suppressing fish stock recovery, including climate change effects, poor water quality, altered hydrology and physical habitat modification or degradation.

The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 provides licensing functions to permit the control of cormorants to protect fisheries where it can be shown that non-lethal measures are failing to manage predation. Licences are issued by Natural England, which has responsibility for setting a prudent upper limit on cormorant control to ensure that licensed removal does not irreversibly affect their conservation status.