The population of snow geese is booming and creating an environmental disaster in Canada, where they breed on the tundra, says Harvest Public Media. A reason behind the boom, it says, is the “Midwest farmland buffet” that eases the twice-a-year, 5,000-mile migration to and from the southern United States.
Drew Fowler, a doctoral student at the University of Missouri, says the Midwest flyway “is like one long buffet line” with meals available at rice, wheat, corn and soybean fields. Instead of a long, grueling flight, migration looks more like a series of stepping stones. There are an estimated 13 million snow geese now, compared to less than a million in the 1960s.
The vast flocks of snow geese are mowing down vegetation in Canada that used to feed other birds, such as the sandpiper, that also live along the coasts of the James and Hudson bays. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relaxed hunting regulations on the geese in 1999 and some farmers have opened their land to outfitters looking for hunting ground, says Harvest Public Media. That’s helped reduce the population. Fowler, the Mizzou researcher, is investigating whether hunters are culling the weaker geese, which leaves the strong ones to breed.