There is a story being perpetuated about 1+1=2 as well. Shocking, I know. I live in MI, and mute swan decrease in order to help increase our native trumpeter swan, the one's which we are responsible to the world for recovering, is very welcome. We are seeing more trumpeters and it is so cool. We don't hate swans, we want more of the ones that we can be proud of having restored. You can still have mutes, but under rules treating them more like other domestic birds.

"in the millions" is shameless baloney. You are letting yourself just make things up, in a sentence complaining about misrepresentations no less.

Mutes could have hunting seasons declared more easily than native swans since they don't have federal protections like our native waterfowl have, cause they are alien (and feral). I think the main reason we don't let people shoot them in MI now is fear of accidentally killing native swans. By comparison we let hunters shoot feral or escaped pigs on sight and few people are complaining. If there are ever enough Trumpeters that folks could actually hunt them, that would mean we have done our jobs incredibly well. It's not even clear the citizens would be OK with hunting of trumpeters, though for tundras it is happening already in limited numbers in a few states in SE USA.

Disclaim: I hunt no birds of any kind.