The Killing Off of The Canadian
Snow Goose

Interview by Claudette Vaughan

Who would kill such a lovely creature? Here you’ll find the latest facts on the issue and what’s behind the killing of the Canadian Snow Goose. Barry Kent MacKay is a director of the Canadian group, Animal Alliance of Canada. This group focuses on local, regional, national and international issues concerning the goodwill and respectful treatment of animals by humans.

Abolitionist: Please tell us the history of the Canadian Snow Goose?

Barry Kent MacKay: The species breeds in the far north, often on tundra, above the treeline, and deep into the high arctic.

There are a great many more of them now than there have been during most of the 20th Century, although no one knows exactly how many. They increased dramatically in the last two to three decades.

They feed by "grubbing". This means that instead of grazing, which means they cut plants off at the surface of the soil, leaving the roots and rhizomes intact underground so that the plants can grow back again, they actually dig down into the soil and damage or remove roots and rhizomes as well, a way of feeding called "grubbing".

The concern is that when the plants are removed in this manner, it will destabilize the soil, and it will increase the salt content of soil that is near salt water (including Hudson's Bay, the giant body of water where many Snow Geese breed), and that this is a permanent form of damage that reduces the ability of the region to sustain other forms of wildlife. It has been called a "peril" to the arctic and subarctic ecosystems.

Abolitionist: Who is killing her?

Barry Kent MacKay: What is seen as an unprecedented number of Snow Geese (and Ross's Geese, a very similar, but smaller, species that was once endangered but has also become increasingly abundant and which also grubs) involves an unknown number of birds, but whatever the number is, it is far too many to
economically "control" by non-lethal means. Similarly, there are no budgetary allowances within wildlife management agencies that would allow controlled shooting at a scale necessary to significantly reduce the population...it would be an enormous and very costly undertaking.

Therefore hunting is touted as a "wildlife management tool", since hunters will pay for the permits needed to allow them to hunt Snow Geese.

However, bag limits and hunting season lengths were not enough to allow a significantly large number to be killed, so in the U.S., and Canada, the regulations were changed to allow far more Snow Geese (and, in the U.S., but not Canada, Ross's Geese) to be killed. This included an increase in the bag limit, and a spring season hunt, allowing electronic devices to be used to imitate goose calls and so on...things that are normally not allowed because it can lead to too many birds being killed.

Some experts who share the concern (which we don't, as will be explained below) that the large number of Snow Geese is damaging the arctic and subarctic ecosystems (and will ultimately cause a crash in the Snow Geese population as they run out of food) nevertheless don't think that even with the added numbers being killed it will be enough to "control" the population and address the concern.

Northern people tend to kill waterfowl for food, in the south it is for more for sport. Snow Geese in North America migrate from their northern breeding grounds, to wintering grounds in the southern U.S, and northern Mexico. There are major wintering populations along the Gulf coast, and in the
southwest, including California and the inland valleys.

Snow Geese that nest in the mid to eastern-North American arctic and subarctic are a bit larger and they migrate down through eastern North America, many thousands stopping in the lower St. Lawrence River, and then moving on to the U.S. Mid-Atlantic east coast. Most of the hunting is done in the U.S., and in the lower St. Lawrence.

We were able to protect the Ross's Goose in court in Canada, so while it is still hunted, it is not legally hunted in Canada in the spring, and increased bag limits for Snow Geese don't apply to Ross's Geese.

However, in flight it is very difficult to distinguish from the Snow Goose, and studies show that most hunters are not too good at identifying species of waterfowl they shoot at any rate.

Abolitionist: What are animal advocates doing in Canada to help the Canadian Snow Goose?

Barry Kent MacKay: We've pretty well done all that we can, I fear, and we've lost. The real battle was in the U.S., and I believe that the U.S. drove the effort for a variety of reasons.I went to the subarctic, to the place where the initial studies were done that raised the alarm, to see for myself what was happening. There were certainly areas that were denuded of vegetation by Snow Geese, although when we dug into the muck that was left behind we did find rhizomes, suggesting that regrowth, while slow because of the short growing season, would occur. We took a biologist who had studied geese and goose feeding habits and subarctic ecosystems and the impacts of geese on them, as an advisor.

He and I co-authored a report, critical of a paper published by Canadian and American wildlife agencies that first raised the alarm, and distributed it widely. I, and others, wrote numerous articles and held press conferences presenting our views.

We sought to educate the public, although we got off to a slow start and it was an uphill battle.

The original paper that raised the "alarm" about "too many" Snow Geese, and subsequent work by the "scientists" (mostly wildlife management agencies who use science to advance political agendas, in my opinion) ignored or even, in one case, mis-represented, earlier, if anecdotal, evidence to the effect
that the huge numbers of Snow Geese we are now seeing were not, in fact, unprecedented historically. That similar numbers are clearly indicated in the old observations by early naturalists to have occurred in North America before, which means that no permanent "damage" was done to the arctic and subarctic ecosystems, was either pooh-poohed on the grounds that the observations were "anecdotal", or just ignored.

We tried to point out that it is normal, not unusual, for arctic species to experience wide fluctuations in populations sizes, with large numbers being followed by huge population crashes. The pro-management view was that it was better to shoot the birds to prevent starvation, what I call pre-emptive euthanasia. Our view was that Snow Geese had co-existed with other native wildlife for many thousands of years, through vast fluctuations and changes in climate and conditions, even including ice-age advances and retreats, without costing any losses of any species, and at any rate there was no contemporary decline noted in any arctic or sub-arctic species of fauna or flora attributed to Snow Geese. When habitat is altered, it will "benefit" some species while "hurting" others, in terms of carrying capacity, but such fluctuations have been happening since time immemorial.

We tried to also point out that among the wildlife management agencies, particularly in the U.S., where funding comes from sale of guns and ammunition as well as from hunting permits, there was a vested interest among those raising the concerns in promoting hunting as a "wildlife management tool", and so the not unprecedented increase in Snow Geese was just an excuse that promoted funding and allowed wildlife managers to get all kinds of grants to do studies of the "problem" that they had identified.

We tried, as well, to point out that even if the projections of recovery that were given (one pro-cull wildlife manager told me that it would take "fifty years" for vegetation to recover, and my response was, "so what is
the problem", since that is, in geological terms, a very brief time) were accurate, it would not reduce a significant proportion of the population of any northern species of wild fauna or flora, and we tried to indicate to people who had never been there just how vast the region is, and how little
of it, statistically speaking, was affected at all.

We discussed the effects of global warming, a presumably anthropogenic force working upon the arctic and subarctic that is far more likely to affect other species than anything the Snow and Ross's Geese could do, and the effects in the Hudson's Bay region of isostatic uplift, which increases new habitat for nesting birds at a relatively huge rate, also is far more significant than the actions of Snow Geese.

We formed a coalition, we took the agencies to court in both Canada and the U.S., and we produced materials to try to explain why there was indeed an increase in Snow and Ross's Geese, but why that increase posed no threat to the arctic and subarctic ecosystems.

But I fear that the public and media are predisposed to give extra weight coming from wildlife management agencies, and to assume that our side was only motivated by a sentimental concern for individual birds while failing to appreciate the big picture. Animal protection groups were often uninterested or unable to provide us with effective help, I think in part because of the technical complexity of the issue, and in part because the numbers of birds involved, while huge, was a drop in the bucket compared to
suffering imposed by, for example, the meat industry.

Whatever the reason about all we can do at the moment is monitor the situation and point to the fact that we've proved right to date...that grubbed areas do recover, that no species of arctic fauna or flora has been put at risk because of Snow Goose numbers, and that the arguments provided by the other side were, at least, of questionable merit.

For example, they argued that the amount of grain produced by agriculture resulted in a far greater survivor rate of young geese in winter than was true on former times, thus "artificially" enhancing the number of birds able to breed in subsequent years. While there is an element of truth to this as it applies to some regions (for example, the Central Valley of California, due to irrigation, which now has wetlands in areas that were once desert, and grain in areas that were once sand) overall it seems impossible to believe that with all that we've done to the environment that is negative, including the massive loss of coastal wetlands and marshes and their ability to sustain waterfowl, that somehow the pristine, pre-Columbian environment was less supportive of wintering Snow Geese than our modern, industrialized environment.But, lacking time machines to go back and verify our contention, we could only make, not prove, the contention.

Abolitionist: Do any laws exists to prosecute hunters/shooters?

Barry Kent MacKay: Sure. Absolutely. Hunting is very much regulated and hunters must meet a suite of rules and regulations that are theoretically designed to prevent the loss of species being hunted, and to protect the rights or interests of others.

Enforcement is the problem. It is hard for a finite number of under funded conservation officers to enforce the laws that exist, but certainly they try, and many hunters assist.

I should say that not a few hunters are not happy about the situation pertaining to Snow Geese, as they recognise, as do I, that it promotes the worst kind of hunting. The Canadian government felt obliged to produce a book of Snow Goose recipes, and it is illegal to kill game that is not eaten. They know that the government looks the other way on this, and that many geese are shot to rot by hunters for whom hunting simply means killing.

Abolitionist: What's your interest and activism in all of this?

Barry Kent MacKay: I think, primarily, I fear that it is an abuse of science in the interest of political expediency. As the numbers of hunters decreases (and in both Canada and the U.S., hunters, thus hunting revenues, are in decline) more and more reasons to kill animals are being promoted by wildlife management interests that form an "Old Boys'" coalition (mostly made up of white-Anglo-Saxon, overweight males) that is a blend of government-employed wildlife managers, "conservation" NGOs, hunter-service commerce (including arms and ammo manufacturers) and hunters...a massive lobby group, with interchangeable roles, benefiting each other whether or not any given individual within this mix is, himself (more rarely herself) a hunter.

It is self-perpetuating so long as the money flows. Conservationists dutifully make donations to an organisation like Ducks Unlimited, which in turn hires contractors (DU's favourite way of helping waterfowl is to undertake massive, technical operations that alter the landscape to produce made-to-order breeding grounds) whose owners sit on the appropriate boards and committees. Government agencies, funded in the U.S. in part by gun and ammunition sales, and in Canada by hunting licenses, hire people who get to spend their careers doing neat out-of-door things in wilderness areas in order to provide a supply of "game" for the hunters to hunt, so that the money keeps flowing to all concerned.

Look, Snow Geese aside (and it is precisely because they are an exception that they are being culled) there is no benefit to any waterfowl species in North America, from being hunted. Hunters can argue (speciously I think, but that's another issue) that there are "too many" deer, but there are not "too many" migratory waterfowl of any species being hunted.

The various agencies will argue that what is hunted is the "surplus"...those birds accessory to the number required to replace those lost to attrition, of which hunting is apart. The theory wobbles a little when various species of migratory waterfowl go into declines, but of course "loss of habitat" can always be blamed."

In fact, and not to suggest complacency about habitat, there is now and for a long time has been, far more habitat available than there are migratory waterfowl, to inhabit it. If all migratory waterfowl hunting other than subsistence hunting in remote areas were halted in North America for just a season or two, there would be a very large increase in many species of waterfowl -- Greater and Lesser Scaup, Northern Pintails, Gadwall, Redheads and Canvasbacks, Eiders, Harlequin Ducks, the three scoters, American Black Ducks and so on -- that, while certainly not endangered, are not at anything like historical numbers, and there is potentially suitable habitat now empty or thinly inhabited by such species, that would, within a year or two, host them. But that won't happen, except as a function of the overall decline in hunters, to the chagrin of the network of people, hunters or non-hunters, whose livelihood depends on there being waterfowl (and other) hunting.

There is something in me that just riles against the double standard that informs so much current wildlife management practice. For example, the evidence that Trumpeter Swans ever nested in eastern North America is slight, anecdotal, and derives from rather liberal interpretation of the historical record. Nevertheless it is enough to justify a massive campaign to "re" introduce the species into a place where, I would argue, it not only never bred, but is at any rate irrevocably altered from what it was prior to an European invasion. But that does not stop a fairly extensive operation to establish the species in the east, in the name of "conservation".

Meanwhile, the "non-native" Mute Swan is being killed off...another rationale for killing wildlife, because it is alien. Because the Mute is "non-native", the argument goes, it does not belong, and it is being demonized for its consumption of vegetation, its impact on native fauna and so on. And yet there is nothing it does that the Trumpeter Swan does not also do (both, for example, will chase native waterfowl from their nesting areas...the Trumpeter arguably more so) plus, ironically, the Trumpeter Swan is noisy...an issue in urban areas where wildlife managers are complacent about having it established.

One difference...historically Trumpeter Swans are more migratory than Mute Swans. In short, they are huntable to a greater degree than the Mute. And since they are also more likely to be a nuisance than the well loved (by most "ordinary" people whose views are held in such contempt by the wildlife management establishment) by virtue of their more aggressive nature and louder voices, there is less likely to be objection to a future need for hunting as a "wildlife management tool" to "control" their numbers.

And at any rate, the "wrongness" of alien species somehow does not prevent the constant introduction of alien species of that "sportsmen" love to hunt or fish that are clearly not native, even though, like the alien species of salmon constantly dumped into the Great Lakes, they are destructive to native species. Somehow it is okay to have non-native pheasants, but not Mute Swans. And there is even at least some evidence that Mute Swans are, in fact, not exactly non-native, since they are quite able, like other Eurasian waterfowl species, of crossing into North America on their own. But such ideas are, of course, ignored or ridiculed.

I think the whole thing with the Snow Geese is similar to what is now happening with Double-crested Cormorants, or any other species that dares to be common, and there are devious tricks done to convince the public, media and legislators that "conservation", not careers, are being served by wildlife management decisions.

For example, whenever the increase in such species is given, it is given from the time when their numbers were lowest, even if those numbers were artificially reduced. It is as if we were to wipe out 90 percent of a town of 1,000 people, and then complain about the "out of control" growth if the population went from 100 to 500, in a generation as a "five fold increase in the numbers of people in a single generation" were somehow wrong and that the new number was "too many".

Across the continent and around the world there is massive killing going on of wildlife, and a general denial that wild animals can be and always have been responsible for the nature of the habitats they inhabit. Elephants are blamed, in Africa, for eating "too much" vegetation. Sei Whales and Minke Whales eat "too many" fish. So do seals and cormorants. Increasingly there is just deemed to be too little room for other species, and none, from crows to cormorants to Snow Geese to whatever must dare to take more than a small share of the world we co-inhabit.

Abolitionist: What can readers do to help you?

Barry Kent MacKay: Get informed; act politically. I think the two biggest obstacles we face on these issues is that people who are predisposed to want to help animals are not well enough informed about nature, ecology, animal behaviour, population dynamics and the like to oppose the faulty arguments made in favour of culling, and, as a group we are not seen as a political constituency able to make a difference in the fates of the politicians who listen to those who can do their own careers most good.