No Handouts for Wildlife

by Christina Mann,

Wildlife Biologist I dropped by a friend’s property on Riverside Dr. They were outside this early morning, but they were not alone. Besides some relatives, my friend was being mobbed by Canada Geese; and gleefully exclaimed that almost 30 goslings had hatched out this year. I was both dumbstruck and disgusted.

This home-grown feeding program was not only technically illegal, it had the potential for harm to all creatures involved. Juvenile geese were coming and taking food right from human hands. They had no fear, and they had very strong, sharp bills grabbing at mouthfuls of grain. It could almost be termed a melee. Even some of the parent birds were jostling in to snatch a free breakfast.

I was not being sarcastic when I asked my friend whether the birds were called Canada Geese, or Carlsbad Geese? Even a fifth grader knows that wild Canada Geese migrate South in the Fall and return to the North in Spring to raise their young. Their annual migration is as old as time, but here was undone by an individual buying scratch grains and laying crumbles in an effort to see the birds close up. Sorry friend; that’s not entertainment- its a destructive behavior that is modifying wildlife behavior, and it needs to stop. A goose hatching out in Carlsbad is fairly close to the equator, when it should be fairly close to the Bering Sea, far to the North. How is that bird going to migrate when the time comes a year from now? Not all behaviors are purely instinctual. Unlike Monarch Butterfly migrations, bird migration is largely learned from the elders.

As an undergrad at Cal Poly Humboldt in the Wildlife program, I remember joining a lab group cataloging the impact caused by Canada Geese grazing along the Arcada ranches on the flat-lands towards the bay. I found no shortage of research papers detailing the amount of grass Canada Geese eat- even exceeding the consumption by that of cattle in a similar mass, (pound for pound, geese can out-graze a cow)! Landowners, operators, and tenants have the ability to file for a depredation order for resident Canada geese at agricultural facilities. The order authorizes States or Tribes to implement a program to allowing them to conduct direct damage management actions, such as nest and egg destruction, gosling and adult trapping and culling programs, or other management strategies designed to permanently evict Canada geese.

So now these young geese were imprinted on the Pecos River. They can actively harass people, some being larger than young children in the parks. I think every person has met someone with a childhood horror story of being chased by or afraid of a goose. Geese also leave behind a large amount of droppings; sometimes messy, and even carrying zoonotic parasites like Coccidia and Giardia. Why is this happening? All because someone wanted to get close up and personal with wildlife. Just ask the grandfather visiting Yellowstone last week how that worked out for him in his close encounter with a Bison bull. I think he’d agree with me to give wildlife the distance and respect that they deserve.