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Apparently, geese have nested earlier and are molting earlier in Utah (a generally warmer climate than New York).
But, the flightless geese and their recently hatched goslings are now being rounded up, separated and "relocated" to places where their outcomes are virtually doomed.
While the news video above intimates "happy endings" for the separated goose families, it is more comparable to McDonald's advertisements of "happy meals" of slaughtered animal corpses.
Geese are extremely family oriented. Goslings stay with their parents for a full year following hatching and often even years following (with the exception of nesting seasons).
So, why would wildlife officials separate the families with any benign intent?
Flightless goslings without parents will be easy prey for predators (and even other territorial birds) and the adult, flightless geese will be easy targets at a hunting preserve.
This is not the "feel good" story that the media makes it out to be.
It is rather, a great deception.
If wildlife officials seriously wanted to "manage" the goose population in Salt Lake City parks, they would have oiled the eggs before hatching and hired a goose hazing company with trained Border Collies to move geese along naturally. Such would have been cheaper, more effective and humane than the grand "relocation" scheme.
As noted in this blog, such methods have worked very well in Central Park (to my personal dismay) where even today, the resident goose population remains very low.
Call me an over-sentimentalist "anthropomorphic," but I feel for these stressed and flightless parent geese
suddenly stripped of their young and dropped off at a hunting preserve while their totally defenseless and now parentless goslings are dumped to fend for themselves against predators and territorial birds in a location few if any humans will ever see.
"Out of sight, out of mind" as the saying goes.
Like McDonalds in more ways than one.
God forbid any of us look beyond the colorful, happy-faced wrappings of slaughtered animal parts in a fast food restaurant or media "feel good" stories that defy common sense and all we know about nature and Canada geese. -- PCA
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