Where did the Canada geese that nest in Iowa come from?
Giant Canada geese nested throughout all of Iowa before the 1800’s. Habitat loss and unregulated harvest caused the nesting population to disappear from the state by 1910. A program to restore the population of giant Canada geese was initiated in northwest Iowa in 1965. The geese used for this restoration program were descendants of wild giant Canada geese that had been captured in Iowa and southern Minnesota during the latter half of the 1800s. Settlers in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota frequently captured these geese during mid-summer when the adults were molting and the young could not yet fly. (Biologists still capture geese this way to band them each year.) Flocks of these large geese were raised on many pioneer farms for food as well as for their feathers, particularly their soft insulating down.
