Cormorant Relief Act of 2025

The bill would direct the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to reissue a depredation order for double-crested cormorants at aquaculture facilities. That order, originally codified at 50 C.F.R. § 21.47, was vacated by a court in 2016. Reissuing it would allow landowners, operators, tenants, and employees of aquaculture entities — as well as licensed private lake and pond managers — to kill, capture, disperse, or transport the carcasses of double-crested cormorants causing or threatening harm at aquaculture facilities and fish hatcheries, without obtaining an individual Migratory Bird Treaty Act permit.

The reissued order would expand geographic coverage by adding California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to the states already covered. The Secretary must also renew the order at least every five years. The bill explicitly preserves the obligation to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and it updates recordkeeping requirements and terminology from the original rule.

Owners and operators of aquaculture facilities (such as fish farms and catfish ponds), state and federal fish hatchery staff, and licensed private lake and pond managers in the states covered by the expanded order — spanning the South, Midwest, and parts of the Northeast and West. Double-crested cormorant populations in those states would also be directly affected.

Without a depredation order, aquaculture operators must apply for individual federal permits each time they want to legally control cormorants, which is slow and costly. Reissuing the order would restore permit-free authority to act quickly when birds threaten fish stocks or hatcheries, and would extend that protection to lake and pond managers and to over a dozen states not covered by the 2016-era rule.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would need to complete any required environmental review under NEPA and then formally reissue the depredation order as a federal regulation. The order must incorporate modern terminology, simplified compliance language, updated recordkeeping requirements, and have no expiration date (unlike the original). Once reissued, the Secretary must renew the order on at least a five-year cycle. Authorized parties — aquaculture operators, fish hatchery staff, and licensed lake and pond managers — would act under the order without individual permits but remain subject to applicable recordkeeping rules.