"Opinionatedly Yours"
#19: June 1, 1999
The Snow Goose Saga Continues with a Word War Between Colleagues
By Barry Kent MacKay

David Bird is, in some regards, a peer and colleague of mine. He is also, unlike myself, a certified and veritable member of academia. The appropriately named Professor Bird is a well-known Canadian ornithologist teaching at McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, and is the Director of the Avian Science and Conservation Centre.

What makes us "colleagues" is the fact that we both write a column about birds and natural history for a major newspaper. His, entitled "Bird's Eye View," is published by the Montreal Gazette. Mine, called "Nature Trail," is published in the Toronto Star. We both have written books, and indeed, even for the same publisher, Key Porter Books. David's latest is an extremely useful little volume, jammed with facts about birds, entitled The Bird Almanac: The Ultimate Guide to Essential Facts and Figures of the World's Birds. Of course they are mostly "essential" to those of us endlessly fascinated by birds. I highly recommend it.

David's column is about twice as long as mine. Even so I suspect that all columnists dealing with specialized areas of expertise, no matter how many words their editors allow, occasionally lament lack of room with which to explain complex issues for a lay audience. Thus at least part of what I am about to say is predicated on an understanding that columns do impose specific limitations. Here, space is not an issue, and so it is here I wish to reply the first of two columns David Bird wrote about an issue of great concern to me. Possibly I will deal with the second column, one on the same subject, at a later date.

The issue is one I've written about extensively in the past for API -- the government sanctioned lethal culling of huge numbers of snow geese. The Internet allows me the room to fully respond to David's first column, published on April 17, 1999.

He's not the only columnist to whom I would wish to respond. There have been dozens of hunting and "outdoor" columns uncritically buying the argument that the snow geese are at unprecedented numbers, are destroying important habitat while putting themselves at risk of disease and starvation and thus must be slaughtered in huge numbers in order to prevent such bad things from happening. These columnists display no trace of thought that there is another side to the story. But they are hunters writing for hunters. David is, as I said, a colleague. So why do we differ, and why do I care?

David Bird represents, to me, a body of thought and a group of people potentially both more dangerous and more helpful to animals than any collected group of sport hunters. He is part of the academic community whose opinions can help fuel government policy. In this case the government, like David, sees sport hunting as a component of what David calls "sound wildlife management principles."

But are they?

The Column

Let's look at what David has written (and yes, we do know each other, if not well, and we are on a first name basis).

If you are firmly opposed to lethal culling, you will no doubt agree with my own concerns and conclude that I present them very well. If you are, on the other hand, a sport hunter or if you are involved in that branch of academia engaged in wildlife management, I will probably not change your mind and you will think David presents by far the better arguments.

If you are not in either "camp," this edition of Opinionatedly Yours is most especially for you!

"Snow Geese Cull Comes under Fire"

That was the headline of "Bird's Eye View" on Saturday, April 17, 1999. David Bird wrote:

Thousands upon thousands of honking snow geese swirling about and blanketing an open field is a spectacular sight and one not easily forgotten. Thousands upon thousands of ducks and geese dying agonizingly slowly from avian cholera, botulism or starvation is also a scene not easily erased from one's mind.

And that's where our mushrooming flocks of snow geese are headed, unless drastic steps are taken.

The concern is valid. However, many bird species, from red knots to lesser flamingos, also spend at least parts of their life cycles in intense concentrations of large numbers, and all are vulnerable to contracting avian cholera or other communicable diseases and spreading them to other species. Avian cholera is one of a suite of disease agents that act as, in concert with other sources of mortality, as "limiting factors" in waterfowl and other wildlife populations. Avian cholera was unknown in North America prior to World War II, but that fact may reflect the impoverished state of knowledge about such things at that time. It has certainly increased, especially in the U.S., since then. This postwar spread of the disease in North America lends credence to the assumption that it is, indeed, not a native disease but present as a result of human endeavor, however unintentional.

The most common victims of avian cholera (also known as fowl cholera or avian pasteurellosis) is the mallard duck, one of the most abundant and widely spread of all waterfowl species in the world. Wildlife management, in which we apparently are supposed to have such faith, has led to increases in mallards and somehow that is okay. Next most common victim of avian cholera is the northern pintail, followed by Canada geese, followed by American wigeon. Snow geese, redheads, scaups, teal, gadwalls and other waterfowl species have all been victimized. So have cattle, horses, swine, goats, sheep, dogs, cats, gerbils, rabbits, elk, deer, caribou, bighorn sheep, bison, bear, lynx, bobcat, puma, fox, weasel, mink, raccoon, rats, mice, voles, muskrat, nutria and chipmunk -- all mammals. To the list add such birds as chickens, turkeys, domestic ducks, domestic geese, domestic pigeons, cranes, pelicans, herons, gulls, grebes, hawks, owls, pheasants and various songbird species.

Avian cholera involving snow geese appears to have mainly happened outside the breeding grounds, in areas where there are other numerous waterfowl species. It is not specifically linked to snow geese. We could exterminate snow geese without eliminating, or probably even reducing to a statistically significant degree, the amount of avian cholera in the environment.

I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but biologically avian cholera is, if you will, a result of there being birds. Reduce all birds, especially waterfowl, and you reduce incidence of the disease. Exterminate all birds, especially waterfowl, and presto, you've pretty well eliminated the disease. You can't have it both ways; if you want birds, you get the diseases, parasites and predators that go with them.

Alas in wildlife management there is still a lingering "morality" that perceives "good" and "bad" animals with those qualities based on utilitarian interests. Something, be it a wolf, hawk, seal, cormorant or goose, can be "bad" if it competes with "good" animals. In this case the snow goose is "good" -- it has obvious utilitarian value to both consumptive and non-consumptive interests -- while it is also "bad" to the degree that it can damage itself or other "good" animals.

Avian Botulism, also called limberneck, western duck sickness, duck disease or alkali poisoning, is caused by a bacterium, Clostridium botulinum. It thrives in waters that are around 25 degrees C. (77 degrees F.) and thus is certainly not to be expected in the arctic and subarctic normal breeding grounds of the snow geese.

Botulism is perhaps the best known of the diseases that regularly kill huge numbers of birds. Waterfowl, loons, shorebirds and gulls are most frequent victims. It often spreads when birds such as sandpipers eat maggots that are feeding on carcasses of birds that died of botulism. A single die-off can kill over a million birds. The birds lose the ability to maintain the tension in their neck muscles, and sometimes, unable to hold their heads above water, they struggle and drown.

But that's been going on since the first known outbreak of botulism in birds was recorded, in 1910, and probably for many centuries, if not millennia, before then.

Again, while it appears that snow geese, by intensively congregating, as is their nature, can exacerbate conditions in which botulism thrives, they have not done so to a degree equal to other species. Botulism recently wiped out huge numbers of other species of birds in the Canadian prairies, without anyone suggesting that any of those species be reduced. A species not involved is the one being targeted.

Starvation is also a possibility, as the snow goose population rapidly increases. Starvation can involve any arctic and subarctic wildlife, or wildlife in temperate regions. For some reason, however, people become more emotionally concerned when the species facing starvation is big, conspicuous and well-known -- like a snow goose -- and let such species as lemmings or longspurs "manage" themselves. What David and others advocate -- the killing of animals before such natural causes of death can occur, as a "humane" act -- is what I call "preemptive euthanasia." To me it makes no sense. Instead of allowing natural selective forces -- including disease, predators, parasites and starvation -- determine which genes are to be passed on, it is the shotgun that makes the selection. It is as true of snow geese as it is of humans -- that if we humanely kill a healthy individual, that individual will not suffer prior to death at some point in the future. It is also just as illogical. (Mind you, I don't consider a shotgun blast to be a source of humane death, not when studies have shown that 30% of birds shot by hunters are only wounded.)

Prior to "starvation" birds tend first to lose levels of fecundity. This is already happening with snow geese, with "density dependent" factors kicking in, in parts of their nesting range, as is to be expected, and as has always previously happened. Thus with fewer and smaller eggs and young and smaller adults on the breeding grounds the population is doing what populations always do, checking itself.

Having thus convinced himself, but not me, that "drastic steps" are warranted, David goes on to write:

Naturally, animal-rights organizations are outraged ...

Let me stop right there, in mid-sentence. As one of the humanitarians or animal advocates (I'll accept either label, although grudgingly as I have an intense dislike for stereotyping and if there is one thing I prefer to be called, it is a "naturalist" -- that, really, is what I am) this statement offends me. "Animal-rights" is not defined by David, but it immediately feeds into the dichotomy that I'm sorry to say I see the defenders of the lethal cull promoting. If they can dismiss the concerns of myself and others (in this case a very broad assortment of individuals and organizations) as stemming from a philosophical objection to any and all use of animals, they can simply dismiss, out of hand, what we have to say, to the degree that they, like the majority of society, can dismiss "animal-rights" as an "unrealistic" goal, attitude, philosophy or whatever it is supposed to be.

And to the degree that at least some of whatever is meant by "animal rights" has been known to involve various illegal or anti-social acts, identifying myself and others thus places us all outside the social norm.

I would also argue at any rate that the organizations most involved in opposing the lethal cull are not what most people generally think of as "animal rights" organizations. The organizations that most people do generally think of as "animal rights" -- the more militant and outspoken groups -- have not been primarily involved in this issue.

As explained in detail on Opinionatedly Yours #1 and Opinionatedly Yours #2, "animal rights" has become a cliché, virtually never defined and so broadly applied by the media as to be functionally meaningless. My objection is that it does serve to separate "us" from "you" in those advocacy situations where "you" are the people "we" are trying to convince.

The complete paragraph reads:

Naturally, animal rights organizations are outraged, proposing to mount a legal challenge to what they deem to be a serious violation of the Migratory Birds Convention. And if one's prime goal is life is to eradicate hunting, the snow geese harvest couldn't be a more perfect target to whip up public sentiment. Pandas, baby seals, snow geese -- must be something about white and black.

That's just plain insulting. There are laws governing what the federal government can or cannot do. In Canada one of the major legal arguments made by lawyers opposing the lethal culling of snow geese by opening a spring hunt (and other measures) was that the Act governing the convention mandated certain things which the Canadian government failed to do.

In the U.S., one of the major legal arguments mounted by lawyers opposing the lethal culling of snow geese by opening a spring hunt (and other measures) was the legally mandated requirement to first produce an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), requiring a greater onus of "proof." Whether government violation of its own rules is or is not "serious" depends on the values of whoever is making the determination. I can accept that such violations are more serious to me than to David.

It is not that I'm a proponent of blind obedience to the law, but if the government mandated to uphold the law fails to do so, at the very least I think it sets a potentially dangerous precedent worthy of thorough examination. As citizens we had the right to challenge, in court, the government's decision.

In this case, those of us on the Canadian side of the border believed the regulations, if approved, would contravene two fundamental prohibitions of the 1916 Migratory Birds convention and would be ultra vires, or beyond the authority of the government to make regulations under the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994, because that Act limits authorization to making regulations that are in accordance with, and do not contravene, the actual requirements of the 1916 Convention. We also believed that Canada was negating its legal obligation to determine when a species has an "overabundant" population by allowing the determination to be made by many non-Canadians. We believed that the Constitutional and Treaty rights of Aboriginal people, many opposed to the changes, were violated.

It is absurd to suggest that the First Nations have dedicated their lives to ending hunting. But at the Confederacy of Nations, held in Ottawa from April 12 to 14, the Chiefs in Assembly joined the First Nations in joining the initial court challenge. That was too late to affect the case, which was held earlier. The court was informed of the concerns of the Dene, but did not take them into account. In part the difficulty, here, is the system. In order to be heard before the spring hunt opened in Quebec, it was necessary to rush the case. This degree of urgency runs counter to the highly democratic way in which the First Nations do things, by seeking the opinions of all involved over a wide area where both financial resources and communications infrastructures are thinly spread. That reality in no way negates the value of their concerns, rights, opinions or expertise.

While I am not a lawyer, I do believe that the language and intent of the law was clear, and that the proposed regulations contravened Article II of the Migratory Birds Convention. It appeared to our lawyers, and to me, that in order to implement its agenda legally, the federal government was forced, by Article II of the Treaty, to amend the Convention. The government itself recognized that only by amending new protocols could the plan to add a spring hunt of snow geese be allowed. And yet neither they, nor the judge, cared.

I mention this not because I don't think the protocols might not ultimately be amended anyway, thus allowing the government to implement the spring hunt and nullifying a major argument against doing so, but to point out the limitations of law in what appears to be a two tier system of justice -- one for those of us who must adhere to the letter of the law, and one for the government. Of course many a court ruling has been overturned on appeal (that's why there is an appeal process) but we, who are fighting to keep the government at least legal, have difficulty mustering the resources to continue the battle.

Our lawyers also feared the plan contravened the Treasury Board of Canada's Federal Regulatory Policy on several grounds. Here, again, the argument becomes somewhat convoluted for those of us who are not lawyers. However, there was nothing in what I heard in court, or in the judge's decision, that makes me think our lawyers' concerns were invalid. So when David Bird says that "naturally" we were going to launch a legal challenge, I can only say that if there is a challenge to be made, surely there is a moral obligation to do so.

Our friends and colleagues in the U.S. won more from the courts in a similar challenge. In their case the primary objective was to have an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, before opening up the slaughter of snow geese by eliminating the various safeguards against such excesses that are mandated by the law of the land. The judge agreed that an EIS was required. But even though I think the Canadian case was stronger than the American one, and notwithstanding that it lost (except with regard to Ross's geese; the judge ruled that there could be no spring hunt of the lookalike Ross's geese) I don't think either attempt was frivolous or the "natural" outcome of whatever philosophical bent David is attributing to us. While I think we have a citizen's obligation to move on to the supreme court, as I write these words we are still trying to garner the resources that would allow us to do so.

As to the argument that our "prime goal is life is to eradicate hunting" I can only say that such cheap shots are unfortunate.

In the Canadian court there were four affidavits from our side. One came from Liz White, a fellow director of the Animal Alliance of Canada. While her prime goal in life is certainly not to eradicate hunting, she is unquestionably opposed to hunting for sport. However, she is also law-abiding and dedicated to conservation and not driven to make the eradication of hunting her prime goal in life.

The second came from a hunter who is also, like David, an ornithologist, although unlike David he has specialized in studying snow and Canada geese. He is a university professor and advisor to governments on issues pertaining to hunting. The concept that his "prime goal in life" is to eradicate hunting is simply absurd.

The third is a columnist, like David, but one who mostly has written in support of hunting. He, like David, has a degree in ornithology, although his is specializing in waterfowl. Unlike David he is no longer a part of academia. After many years working for the provincial government, he has left wildlife management. His choice to leave the ranks of wildlife management reflects his concern for the imposition of political agendas upon research findings. Also unlike David, he has spent every year for the last three decades in the heart of the study area, in Northern Manitoba, near Churchill, where the concerns of snow geese "overpopulating" were concocted. He has traveled elsewhere to see first-hand if the concerns about snow geese are valid, and in his opinion they are not. So far two out of three are not even anti-hunting and no one has dedicated his or her life to ending hunting.

One affidavit we sought, but could not obtain on time, came from the Dene Nation. We polled aboriginal groups across the country and found many opposed to the proposed lethal cull. None, obviously, are dedicating their lives to the opposition to hunting. Letters from various aboriginal groups to politicians were entered into evidence.

That leaves me. I don't oppose hunting because I see it as the means by which many species survive. To me opposing hunting is an oxymoron. However, I admit to failing to understand why anyone would want to kill an animal for sport. That said, I long ago realized that my personal opposition to the concept of hunting for sport was immaterial, and could be used by people like David to categorize me as simply "anti-hunting" and ignore what I actually say in defense of my position.

So I do not speak out against hunting overall, even if it is for sport. I realize that the fact that I don't (or do) like something does not make it bad (or good) in any absolute sense.

What I do oppose, however, is specious rationalization in defense of hunting. What I do oppose is the harm that hunting can cause. When the issue comes up, I want all sides considered. As to dedicating my life to eliminating hunting -- no. I lead a fairly complex life dealing with many issues, while also earning a living as an artist and a writer.

The rest of the paragraph is silly. Giant pandas are black and white, but I suspect that the reason why so many of us are concerned about them -- hunters, non-hunters and anti-hunters alike -- is because they are dying faster than they are reproducing, are very few in number, and have lost most of their habitat. I don't expect everyone to share concerns about the planet's increasing loss of biodiversity, but don't attribute those concerns to frivolous cause. From Patagonian toothfish to sea horses and coral polyps to Gurney's pittas there are many species of fauna whose various plights concern me, regardless of their colors.

The Canadian seal hunt issue is vastly too complex to discuss here, except to note that if the harp seal does share the fate of the giant panda, concern for its survival of a species is justified. What concerns me more at the moment, however, is the quite unscientific degree of political pressure to force government biologists to scapegoat the harp seal for the excesses, all under the management of biologists in thrall to government policy -- the kinds of policies that led to the destruction of so many east coast ground fisheries.

David Bird provides goes on to provide a little background information:

There are two kinds of snow geese in question here. The greater snow geese fly over southern Quebec to and from their wintering quarters along the Atlantic coast and their breeding grounds are on our northern tundra. Last year, their flock was estimated at 835,000. Doubling every eight years, their population is expected to reach 2 million in 2008.

Three decades ago, the lesser snow geese, a slightly smaller version found mostly in the Midwest, numbered around 800,000. Today there are 5 million of them! After seeking much advice from waterfowl experts at conferences specifically aimed at the snow goose dilemma, the U.S. government recently passed legislation to allow 24 states to ease restrictions on hunting lesser snow geese this spring. An estimated 1.2 million, double their normal number, are up for grabs by hunters.

While I, as a columnist, envy David his long word count, he, too, is forced to simplify. Implied in the first paragraph is that the numbers are accurate and that the first one represents some kind of desirable "norm."

I would also argue that in oversimplification, he missed the point that it certainly appears to be Ducks Unlimited who is behind the presentation that has led to concern that there are, after all the tens of thousands of years that there have been snow geese, suddenly "too many."

"Bird's Eye View" continues:

So why can't we just leave the poor birds to themselves, you ask? Well, here's the problem. On the wintering grounds, natural habitats and foods have disappeared thanks to us, so the birds have taken to dining on nutrient-rich winter wheat and other crops provided by farmers, as well as on significant amounts of grain, soybean and corn left by mechanical harvesters.

They have grown fat and healthy, which has led to decreased winter mortality and increased summer production of young.

David's first paragraph is literally accurate; the grain is "provided" by farmers, paid by governments, to feed the geese. It is not there by accident; it's an intentional effort. There are other grains, as David says, also available as a result of messy mechanical harvesting. If there is a "problem" would it not make sense to address the cause (too much grain) and not the symptom (number of geese)? Why not stop feeding the birds? Why not mandate more efficient harvesting methodology?

The answer is because there is more going on than apologists for the lethal culling of snow geese want you to know. It is not only geese who are provided grain, so are numerous other waterfowl species, all hunted by sportsmen. The need to manage those various species keeps both wildlife managers and Ducks Unlimited in business. You can't have waterfowl hunters, hence the need for waterfowl managers, without waterfowl, the more the better. We don't "manage" most animals, especially at the species level. Increasingly it's recognized that if the environment is safe and sound and close to its primal nature, the species in it can care for themselves, provided, of course, that they are left alone. It is not animals who need be managed, but us.

Have snow geese, because of the manner in which they "grub" for food in concerted flocks, "overdone" things and become "too" common, or is there another reason why there are "too many" snow geese? We'll address that question later. For now understand that David is right in saying that there is grain provided for the geese both intentionally and unintentionally. It feeds all waterfowl, not just snow geese, and those waterfowl provide jobs for the folks who decide such policies as whether or not there should be a grain subsidy.

But David also comments on the snow geese having grown "fat and healthy." Earlier he worried about disease, now they are healthy. Was it "bad" for them not to be "fat and healthy" prior to grain supplements?

We Are in Agreement

Thus David admits that first the wintering grounds' ability to sustain snow geese (which is often called the environment's "carrying capacity") was reduced by human-caused degradation, and then the situation was reversed by grain subsidies. The strange thing here is that essentially we are in agreement. As I have argued elsewhere (see "The Great Goose Hoax," Animal Issues, Winter 1998), the grain subsidies represent compensation for the initial loss of the habitat's carrying capacity.

The big question is this: Has the grain subsidy "over" compensated for human-caused environmental degradation? Has the carrying capacity for snow geese been increased beyond what it once was? Are there therefore now more snow geese then ever before?

To believe that snow geese are at unprecedented numbers you must do something that David has, in fact, done, as have all the snow goose lethal cull supporters, but something I and others who agree with me, including biologists, have not done -- and I will tell you exactly what David did a bit further on.

Having identified the grain subsidies as rectifying the loss of wintering habitat carrying capacity, David continues:

As a result, the huge concentrations of snow geese on the breeding grounds have over-grazed, trampled and essentially denuded large areas of tundra, turning them into salt plains.

Let me stop mid-paragraph and examine that sentence. The term "plains" suggests to me a vast, treeless area, perhaps extending past all horizons. I've been to the heart of the region in question, and I've flown over Cape Churchill and the adjacent region up and down the coast and there are no such "plains." There are areas that are denuded of aboveground vegetation, some as large as a football field, in a region that is unimaginably vast and verdant. Columnist after columnist has talked about "desertification" and yet there is none to be seen.

What David does not say is that it appears that some of the denuded areas are also where there are no snow geese! How can that be? It can't, unless other factors are involved.

The column goes on to say:

Some experts say that the habitat will take decades to recover, while others predict that it is already too late. Other wildlife species depend on that habitat, too. Similar changes are happening at their staging areas too [a staging area is a place where migrant birds stop to rest and feed in large numbers between wintering grounds and breeding grounds], places like Cap Tourmente near Quebec City, which are highly popular for snow geese and ecotourists alike. Back to that later.

A Measure of Time

In the course of a single human lifetime I suppose "decades" may seem an unconscionably long time. Certainly it is to children, and to wildlife managers who must make predictions and calculations on an annual basis. But in the fullness of natural time it is but a blink of a metaphorical eye.

I think that the reason why so many of the First Nations people my colleagues and I have talked to -- people who have actually lived on the land not just for "decades" nor even for a single lifetime, but for generations extending back through thousands of years in time -- don't share David's and various wildlife manager's panic over the snow geese is because they embrace an entirely different way of measuring time. Elders speak of seeing snow geese where they once were, but have not been seen during current human lifetimes. The geese, to them, are finally coming back to numbers that, according to oral tradition and histories, once existed. That ancient knowledge is not formulated as computer models or based on minute measurements of elements isolated from the environmental whole, and so, it seems, it is summarily dismissed.

It was only a short time ago, geologically speaking -- a few thousand years ago -- that all of this "denuded" area was under huge masses of ice. No plants, geese or wildlife managers were there to worry about it. Isotatic uplift -- the rebound of the land from the weight of the glaciers -- has made this one of the most dynamic, changeable areas on earth. Ancient, yes, but always altering, with much of it "new" as compared to such regions as the Amazonian rainforest or the deserts of Australia. Even within the time the technology that wildlife managers put such faith in has been around, those same denuded areas of tundra, chewed up by geese doing as they've always done, were recorded in photographs also ignored by David Bird and the people whose views, as we see, he supports. There's really nothing new here. Even global warming, which is currently doing more than the geese ever can do to change the fundamental nature of the arctic and subarctic ecosystems, has happened before. What is new, ironically, is human technology and the wondrous faith people have in its ability to delineate the real world.

But I digress. There is no way of knowing that denuded patches of the tundra will never again be vegetated, and there is nothing remotely scientific in making such a claim. And if it takes up to 50 years (as one Canadian Wildlife Service biologist, in charge of the government's lethal cull program, has said on several occasions) then let it take 50 years. But of course that's not how most of us think. Our sense of what is "too" long is attached to the time we have to live. We have been conditioned from infancy to value stability, to identify "problems" and create "solutions." It's simple. Geese are eating vegetation faster than it can replicate -- or at least some geese are in some places -- therefore there are too many geese.

A member of the Dene who had practical experience with snow geese and was an observer to our small coalition trying to stop the lethal cull, recently told us an interesting story. She was speaking from her office in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories during a teleconference meeting. At an affair hosted by Ducks Unlimited to convince everyone of the "overabundant" snow geese and the resulting threat, she asked the speaker when, in Ducks Unlimited's view, a species of wildlife was "overabundant." He paused, considered the question, and then replied that a species was "overabundant" when it had an impact on the environment.

I'll try to resist excessive comment on the irony of a member of our species blaming another species for "overpopulating" and, as a result of doing so, causing environmental degradation. I'll resist except to say I wish we'd better police ourselves before policing others according to our own value system -- a value system that has triggered the greatest extinction spasm since the loss of the dinosaurs as a result of environmental destruction on a scale of magnitude that mocks the concerns expressed by those who want to kill off half the lesser snow goose population. The more pertinent point is that an animal effecting the environment is most assuredly not a measure of "overpopulation." Numerous animals impact on the environment as a result of their population sizes.

When Wildlife Managers Play God

The column continues:

Wildlife managers would like to keep the greater-snow-goose populations down to somewhere between 800,000 and a million using controlled harvesting methods to achieve their goal.

I'll stop there to point out that the "denuding" David mentions has yet to be seen in the nesting grounds of the greater snow goose -- a snow goose subspecies that nests in the eastern arctic. In other words, the value system by when wildlife managers have determined "overpopulation" don't even apply to greater snow geese.

The column, however, gets to the what I consider to be the core of the issue by continuing:

Wildlife protectionists, on the other hand, claim that the geese populations were just as high prior to the 1900s and that they are merely cycling with a normal impact on the ecosystem.

First, I wonder whether the data collected back then are reliable. Second, the dramatic growth in lesser-snow-goose populations in the Midwest over a quarter of a century with no end in sight would appear to refute the notion of a cycle. Third, are we willing to take that chance? And fourth, in what manner would we prefer to see the geese die?

Whew. Let's take those questions in order.

First, we don't know if the data collected back then were reliable, but if we say they were unreliable, we are calling not just one or two unknown observers, but all of the early observers commenting on snow goose numbers unreliable. I first became involved in the issue as a result of what I consider a serious, and definitely unscientific, misrepresentation in the Arctic Goose Joint Venture's publication that influenced government policy to implement the lethal cull. Before I ever reached the breeding ground of the lesser snow geese, I wrote of my concerns for API (see Opinionatedly Yours #6). They cited a person you many not have heard of, but whose name is well known to David Bird. I refer to Arthur Cleveland Bent. The authors of the Working Group's report say, "... Bent (1962) does not mention declines nor does McIlhenny (1932) during his 50 years of close association with blue geese on the Gulf Coast."

"Blue geese" are the dark, or blue, color phase of the snow goose.

What is important is that it appears that the claim is that Bent makes no reference to declines prior to date of publication, given as 1962. But Bent died in 1954. The actual work was published in the early 1920s, with 1962 merely the date of republication. As for the reference to McIlhenny, his study "during his 50 years of close association with blue geese," published in 1932, at the beginning of the infamous dust bowl era of massive droughts, actually ends with a precaution not to allow the blue goose to go the way of the whooping crane, a critically endangered species. Why would he even have had such a thought if, as the working group implies, he had no concern about declines?

Prior to the court case I was cross examined on my belief in the reliability of McIlhenny's concerns, on the grounds that McIlhenny's only claim to expertise was that he was a wealthy land owner who owned the land where the birds wintered. I suspect that, on the contrary, his great familiarity with his own land would have made him a very reliable observer.

But it's not just McIlhenny who would have to be unreliable. In spite of what the Working Group said, Bent indeed did discuss snow goose declines, citing various sources, all of whom David Bird and the Working Group would have us believe were incompetent bumblers given to exaggeration. That would include George Barston, of the Hudson's Bay Company, who wrote, in 1862, of numbers of snow geese along the James Bay coastline that surely rival those seen today. It would include Walter E. Bryant, a well known observer who seems to otherwise be believed by the scientific community, but wrote of severe declines of snow geese in the far west in the late 19th century. David and I both are familiar with the name of Elliot Coues (he had a flycatcher named after him) who also wrote of the abundance of the species in the far west in the 19th century. Was he so incompetent that we can't believe him? And both David and I have heard of Dr. Adolphus Lewis Heerman, M.D. (he had a gull named after him) who wrote that the geese were so abundant that they "... often cover so densely with their masses the plains in the vicinity of the marshes as to give the ground the appearance of being clothed in snow."

The lack of veracity of the Working Group itself is more at issue here, than the alleged inaccuracy and incompetence of earlier generations of field observers. It was the Working group who claimed that Bent gave no indication of decline in snow goose numbers when, clearly, he cited three famous names in early ornithology, Grinnell, Byrant and Storer, as being concerned, in 1918, that the species conceivably faced extinction in California.

While most of the material in Bent applies to the westernmost snow goose population (whereas, as David points out, it is the Midwestern population that is specifically being targeted) another famous early ornithologist, Herbert W. Brandt (he had a cormorant named after him) discussed the huge numbers of just that population on their wintering grounds, in Texas: "It was the most wonderful sight in bird life I ever saw, and it will never be forgotten, as cloud after cloud of white and black birds took to wing and then settled down in a distant part of the marsh."

All of this before the massive destruction of wetlands from which the snow goose population is only now recovering. The recovery is not because lost habitat has been replaced (although some has, and the United States is claiming an end to net decrease in wetlands) but because the government-subsidized feeding program, augmented by waste grain, has been successful. The argument that it has been too successful only holds true if the current population size exceeds the historic population size. We can never know with absolute certainty, but it has not helped anyone to understand the issue by misrepresenting, denying or ignoring the evidence that indicates that the current population does not exceed previous population size.

Question Two

David has written:

Second, the dramatic growth in lesser-snow-goose populations in the Midwest over a quarter of a century with no end in sight would appear to refute the notion of a cycle.

But the "notion of a cycle" is really David's invention. While it's true that populations of arctic and subarctic wildlife do undergo large population swings, by itself that does not necessarily indicate "cycles" if the term is meant to mean a regular, rhythmic, up and down of population size. Such cycles among snowshoe hares (and their major predator, the northern lynx) are well known and often cited in popular text books. What happened with the snow geese and other waterfowl was not a "natural" cycle, but a depression -- a beating down of the population. The impact of unregulated and market hunting (the very things that led to the Migratory Birds Convention and subsequent Act in the first place, with their controls over hunting) followed by the widespread mid-century decline in wetlands were human-caused phenomena. That does not mean that, historically (or prehistorically) snow geese did not experience similar population lows. The point is that it is in the nature of such species to have both ups and downs in population sizes, dependent on numerous factors, including climate changes and geological changes.

Also, David's assertion that there is "no end in sight" neglects the fact that such an "end" is indeed in sight, reflected in such things as decreases in mean body weight and the laying of fewer or smaller eggs and subsequently fewer and smaller goslings with lower survival potentials. These "density dependent" factors kick in for all other species (as we saw recently with low recruitment rates among many other bird species in the northern Manitoba coastal regions due to a late, cold spring) and they would (and have) for snow geese. Again there is irony here, and enormous hubris, as no other species comes close to matching human ability to achieve exponential growth as a result of the completely human attribute of advanced technology -- technology that, for a very long time, manages to compensate against the density dependent factors that limit population size in all other species (and will, ultimately, limit human population growth as well if it is not limited by conscious determination).

Question Three

After first implying, not entirely accurately, that my colleagues and I are claiming a cyclic population for the snow goose, he asks if we -- society -- should take the chance that we -- those of us challenging the lethal culling of snow geese -- are right.

Essentially the question comes back to one of whether or not the current population sizes of snow geese, particularly the mid-continental population (but also the eastern greater snow geese) are unprecedented, or merely a rebound. We certainly can see the geese consuming vegetation, we can see the bare spots (not desertification, as some columnists claim, and not denuded "plains," but mudflats where, twenty years or more ago, there was ample vegetation). But we can see the same bare spots in photos taken in the early half of this century! There's no reason to assume that they are permanent. There is no other species at risk.

Even so, the question of whether or not we are playing Russian Roulette if we don't drastically reduce goose numbers is valid. We can only answer such questions if we examine all the data. Even then, an educated guess is just a guess. When I first became aware of the issue I had no idea it would take me as far (both literally and figuratively) as it did. In fact, I assumed that yes, there well could be a problem. The arguments, as presented, "made sense" to me. But then I took the trouble to read the actual report, "Ecosystems in Peril," and realized that it was badly flawed. Worse, it misrepresented the historic data by belittling or ignoring it. That is not good science.

I am not, myself, a scientist, but neither are many top goose biologist if "scientist" is narrowly defined by degrees earned. But even if it is so defined, Dr. Vernon Thomas overwhelmingly qualifies for the title. He and I co-authored a reply to the "Ecosystems in Peril" document. Our reply has the awkward title "A critical evaluation of the proposed reduction in the mid-continent Lesser Snow Goose population to conserve sub-arctic salt marshes of Hudson Bay."

It is our contention that it is at least equally dangerous to ignore those data that do not support a hypothesis as it is to base fundamental policy decisions governing management of entire populations on a theory based on such biased reasoning. Remember, what is proposed is unique -- the overthrow of the intent of the Migratory Birds Convention Act in the interest of destroying half of the core population of a native species of migratory bird.

Question Four

Finally, David asks,

... in what manner would we prefer the geese die?

There is, to me, a frightening arrogance to that question; a presumption that it is up to us to improve upon nature -- that we can deliver death in a way that is "better" than what nature does. I can identify with this desire when the victim is clearly suffering; when the victim actually is a victim. Many years ago I found a merganser solidly frozen to ice, obviously dying. After determining that there was no possible way to rescue the unfortunate bird, I shot it. The death the duck would otherwise have suffered is certainly "natural" and I made a difficult decision, based on my personal value systems, to end the bird's life abruptly, rather than leave it to a lingering death. Similarly, I have caused two skunks that were in the last stages of rabies to be put to death, rather than leave them to their lingering fate. On another occasion it was a white-tailed deer, down and sick, far from a road. We called in several different people familiar with wildlife rehabilitation. The deer was dying and the possibility of moving it simply did not exist. Finally we asked the police to come and shoot it.

There have been hundreds of other such instances during the many years I was involved in wildlife rehabilitation. However, all were acts of euthanasia, as opposed to the preemptive euthanasia David and others endorse.

David and others supporting the massive killing of snow geese claim, as indicated above, that the carrying capacity of the environment is much greater than it ever has been. I contend that all historical evidence indicates the contrary. But let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that the historical evidence is all incorrect or misleading ... that previously there was a higher mortality among wintering geese than is now the case. What does that tell us? Surely that the birds in primal times suffered and died because, when they reached their wintering grounds (or staging areas) there wasn't enough food to allow them to survive the winter. Isn't that "good"? Wasn't that winter mortality the means by which the defoliation we are currently seeing was prevented (always ignoring the historical record and the photographs that show such denuding of the vegetation is nothing new)? Are we really so arrogant as to assume that the geese suffered more in primal times and that the modern hunter with a 12-gauge shotgun is the birds' savior?

A Booby's Sad Plight

Whenever I hear wildlife managers and hunters tell sad stories of unhunted animals dying of starvation that would be prevented if only they were duly "harvested," I wonder if they have ever heard of the piquero Peruano, known in English as the Peruvian booby.

Probably not.

But I'm sure David has. Found only along the west coast of South America, it is the major source of gunao, the nutriment-rich bird excrement that is a valuable fertilizer. Its main diet is small fish, particularly those known as anchovies. Those fish thrive in the oxygen-rich cold Humboldt Current. However, every few years there is a well-known weather phenomenon called "El Niño," which causes warm water upwellings inimical to small fish. When this happens the piqueros die off in the hundreds of thousands. For example, in the 1981/82 El Niño episode, the population of piqueros, which are goose-sized birds related to gannets, went from 1,690,000 breeding birds to only 730,000. Those 960,000 adult birds, and perhaps several times that many young, died of starvation, with no hunter, wildlife manager nor, for that matter, animal rights advocate, taking note or expressing concern.

I don't think anyone would "want" those birds to starve, and as one who has been on the west coast of South America during an El Niño year, I assure you there is nothing pleasant about it. As an act of kindness one might well choose to quickly kill any dying birds or other wildlife in preference to allowing them to linger. But surely no one would advocate killing hundreds of thousands of healthy piqueros and other sea birds (and marine mammals and fish, for that matter) in advance of an El Niño year in order to prevent future starvation, and yet that is what David's question implies we ought to do with regard the snow goose.

But there's more to it than that. No one is suggesting that every snow goose will die as the species overwhelms food resources, any more than every piquero will die during a severe El Niño episode. Those who do not die are "selected for" and whatever it was that allowed them to survive, as a species, will be passed on to the next generation.

That is the "selective process" by which evolution occurs. In the case of the piquero it has produced a bird who lays three eggs (one to four) and has, when there is no El Niño, good luck raising young (the magnitude of the human fishery is changing that, but historically during non-El Niño years there has always been an abundance of food for the young piqueros). By contrast the other eight species that are related to the piquero lay fewer eggs (normally two, although gannets lay only one) and one of the two chicks almost invariably dies.

In short, the selective process has favored those piqueros who lay more eggs so that the species can maintain itself even while facing devastating losses every few years as El Niño removes their food supply. Their various relatives of the piquero, living in areas with less food abundance than the anchovies provide, but with fewer food crashes than the piquero Peruano experiences (or at least fewer food crashes until human fisheries management entered the picture) have a much lower "recruitment rate." The piquero, with its enhanced fecundity, can "bounce back." Its relatives cannot. But if the other booby and gannet species were as fecund as the piquero Peruano, they might ultimately overwhelm their respective food supplies.

In short, the conditions of the environment in which a species lives directs the evolutionary path of that species. Unless we assume that grain subsidies and farm wastes are of a temporary nature, it seems that what is happening to the snow goose already (with smaller birds and lower recruitment rates in some areas) and what is predicted (more disease, predation, starvation, parasites and so on) are the means that determine which birds, thus when genetic traits, are passed on. The problem with simply shooting healthy birds is that the more "naturally" selective process, the same process that produced the snow geese and all other species, is usurped. Shooting is not completely random, but is close to it, and the traits it encourages to survive -- wariness, for example -- have little to do with the major biological needs of the species. On the contrary, the proposal for hunters to use electronically amplified goose calls to trick the snow geese takes advantage of the snow goose's instinctive need to congregate in flocks. Thus snow geese who do what has, for so many hundreds of thousands of generations, helped them to survive will now be killed for responding to what, to them, is their own kind.

In the old days, the attitudes that David Bird and others have toward natural controls, extended to predators. Peregrine falcons and northern goshawks kill game animals, game animals are good in that they provide food and sport for people, thus peregrine falcons (then called duck hawks) and northern goshawks (then called chicken hawks) were shot. That attitude still prevails among some of those who shoot wolves, for example, at any opportunity. For others it's now understood that predators are part of the ecosystem and, in part, help select against the weak and ill-suited. So, of course, does disease, but it's still apparently fashionable to rail against this force as once wildlife managers persecuted (and very often still do) predators.

David's column continues:

For various reasons, I do not hunt. However, I have never been opposed to the responsible hunting of a renewable resource. I also know personally many of the biologists who are members of the Arctic Goose Habitat Working Group and/or attended the snow-goose conference a year ago to address what some call "an embarrassment of riches."

These are not gun-toting people who are licking their chops in anticipation of blasting away at those hordes of large white geese to fill their freezers. In fact, I am certain that this decision was not taken lightly and was in fact based upon good science and sound wildlife-management principles. Most of them study ducks and geese because they intrinsically like them. And many of them have likely witness mass die-offs of waterfowl due to starvation and disease. It is not pretty, folks. Worse, avian cholera can spread from infected waterfowl to other birds such as ospreys, which either ingest them or line their nests with the carcasses.

To take the last sentence first, I suspect a gremlin has plagued David as is does all columnists from time to time. Ospreys neither eat geese nor line their nests with goose carcasses. No species does.

Apart from that, however, it seems that David is reluctant to oppose his friends and colleagues. I know the feeling. There are people he knows, personally, and people who share similar value systems. After a fellow columnist chastised me for giving a favorable review to a bad book because the book had been written by an elderly friend who was my mentor, I decided that yes, friendship does interfere with objectivity, and I would never again do a serious review of a book written by someone I know (although I might well talk about it, clearly identifying my relationship with the author). Perhaps it's precisely because I don't know the authors of the report that I don't share David's belief that what their recommendation was "... in fact based on good science and sound wildlife management principles." That, to me, is two different things. As to the first, good science, I just don't happen to think it is good science to so summarily reject or belittle those data that refuse to fit your hypothesis. That is, as I and others have pointed out, exactly what these scientists have done. Because the early records are anecdotal and subjective, and don't involve high-tech surveys, their existence is denied. And yet they exist, and it is not good science to pretend that they do not.

Which brings us to "sound wildlife management principles." It's a grand phrase, to be sure, but what does it mean? In this case it means assuring a steady number of all species, including snow geese. The Working Group is quite emphatic in stressing that one of its major concerns is that the snow goose population does not crash. However, crashes are what do happen in wildlife populations, particularly those in high latitudes. When it's lemmings, it does not much matter to wildlife managers, even though it triggers serious problems for a host of lemming predators. Studies show (and I'm sure David knows) that many of the snowy owls who flood to the south during low lemming years never make it back home. Wildlife managers want to "farm" wildlife at a steady state, not for the sake of the wildlife or the greater environment, but to facilitate the hunting regulations.

I have taken extra time to explain all this because those of us who oppose this "final solution school of wildlife management" have been accused of being indifferent to the suffering of birds who overwhelm their food supply. For the thousands of years of post-ice age snow goose evolution, we are made to understand, a certain large percentage of geese failed to find adequate nourishment on their wintering grounds. Those birds obviously succumbed to starvation, disease, parasites and predators keeping their numbers as low as they were twenty-five years ago. True, large numbers of geese were seen by early observers, but we're supposed to believe that they were all wrong, that because their accounts were anecdotal estimates, and not based on use of high technology, they can be dismissed out-of-hand.

Now, after a century or two of environmental degradation (which had no serious negative impact on snow goose numbers, or so we are supposed to believe) the planting of grains for the geese to eat, plus the waste grain left over from mechanical harvesting techniques, has, we are supposed to believe, suddenly (again in relative terms) vastly increased the carrying capacity of the birds' wintering grounds to something far greater than it ever was.

And if we dare to question all those suppositions, we are classed by people like David as animal rights fanatics with lifelong dedication to ending hunting while being indifferent to the cruel fates in store for those geese not fortunate enough to be shot out of the sky.

David goes on:

Clearly, humans have created this problem. We transformed the coastal winter habitat of the greater snow goose to suit our needs and then we provided a brand new source of nutritious food for them.

That's a curious thing to say. He admits that we "transformed" coastal habitat, although he does not mention that such transformation resulted in a 90%-plus destruction of east coast wetlands. Then he implies that the amount of grain intentionally or accidentally provided to the geese more than compensates for that loss. It is a loss of the equivalent of a continent-sized sanctuary free of drainage, dredging, pollution and sport hunting; a sanctuary filled with undisturbed, pristine marshes and wetlands minus cities, highways, dockyards, garbage dumps and all the current habitat replacing infrastructure of contemporary society. And yet we're supposed to believe that the losses are not merely compensated for by the "gains" but over-compensated to a degree that threatens both the geese and their breeding grounds.

He continues:

While fall hunting was permitted, killing the birds in the absence of aids to attract them in close was too difficult and hunters lost interest. With plenty of food and fewer predators, the geese responded as nature would expect.

I don't know who or what "nature" would "expect" but I do question where, all of a sudden, we find that there are "fewer predators." Certainly in the northland, where the snow geese nest, their return to primal abundance is obviously of benefit to their predators, and I am not sure which of those predators there are fewer of now then there were historically (or if there has been a decrease, why other predators have not increased to take their place). It's true that pesticide residues have had devastating effects on peregrine falcons and other top-of-the-food-chain predators, but it's unclear that such species were in any real way a limiting factor on snow geese numbers.

Hunters who were frustrated because they couldn't outwit a snow goose may be part of the "problem." But the shotgun-toting hunter is not a "natural" predator. Indeed, I suspect that the decline in snow geese from the early numbers David wants us to ignore is at least in part a reflection of the introduction of guns, unregulated hunting and market hunting to the North American continent, although clearly loss of habitat was the greater factor in a decline which David and his colleagues refuse to acknowledge.

David continues:

It is now up to us to rectify the solution. But whether the hunting solution will work remains to be seen.

I'm not sure, but I suspect the last comment is a veiled reference to the fact that some scientists have calculated that there is simply no way that hunters can kill enough snow geese to lower the population to a number that satisfies them.

David concludes:

Having said all that, on behalf of the many birdwatchers who enjoy the spring goose spectacle, I'd like to think that the decision-makers who are encouraging the spring hunt have minimized the probability that the tourists, the hunters and the geese will show up in the same place at the same time. Now that would be an unmitigated disaster!

In fact, it's already happened, at least with regard the lesser snow goose, in the American Midwest, where, earlier this year, birders complained about lack of birds in their local wetlands because of the spring snow goose hunters. Spring is the time when many marsh birds and other wildlife are vulnerable, as they are establishing territories, resting and feeding during migration, feeding young or mating. One can understand the traditional need of native North Americans in remote areas to take geese at this time, but not the southern sport hunter.

In Conclusion

It's easy to simply conclude that a good piece of work was done that produced results that some people don't like. David has gone a bit past that, by providing those people (in this instance) with motivations and affiliations that serve to further separate them from the rest of society. I doubt he did so intentionally, but rather, as a reflection of his own bias.

I have my own biases. They aren't what David might attribute to me, nor are they particularly relevant here. I don't like killing things, yes, but I realize that death occurs, one way or the other. My real bias, or at least the one that I'm conscious of, is against specious reasoning in defense of the subjugation of nature.

As the writer of one I have to say that newspaper columns are great. They allow us to express opinions. But they are limited to an abbreviated, "sound bite" approach to issues that may often be very complex. The Internet provides room for discussion, and yet very few people will read this.

The debate is crippled from the beginning. There is no forum where it can be fully played out, and no ultimate objectivity by which the arguments may be judged. Meanwhile, many more snow geese were shot than would have been otherwise; we are again, as is our wont, exercising our mastery over this wonderful world, and all the rationales are, as David's first column showed, in place.

There is a hard core of folks who are interested in this difficult issue, and it's an issue I will return to, in this space and elsewhere, again.