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 of
