Canada Geese & GM Wheat

[MikeH]

First it was canola, now it's wheat.

Agriculture Canada planted GM wheat in Ottawa, but never thought what might happen if Canada geese flew off with the seeds.

Geese 1
CFIA 0

And I love the bit at the end of the story: This year the Farm hired a company that uses border collies to stalk the geese and eventually drive them away. Dogs getting rid of geese??? That'll work if they are there permanently all year round.  

[richardw]

Makes you wonder how viable it is to carry out those field trials when the markets for developing such crops are limited given that Europe,Asia and Oceania will never import them

[steev]

When my farm was cleared in the 40's, they tried wheat and alfalfa, but soon gave it up, due to the geese.

Canada geese (Brants) no longer migrate from the SF Bay Area; they just hang around, shitting up parks, schoolyards, and golf-courses year-round; lovely birds, since I have no toddlers that might want to play on the grass.

However, as I have posted elsewhere, I wish it weren't prohibited to hunt the tasty buggers; same for the turkeys and deer that infest the urban East Bay. If the prey were hunted, they'd not so much entice predators like coyotes and mountain lions into urban areas, which the police then dispatch "because they pose a public danger" (might eat someone's toddler, out alone after dark, or a little doggie or kitty). Hell, if they rescind the no-taking ordinances on geese, I'll be out the next day, getting half a dozen with a machete; I do love goose.

Saw a doe running up a street in Berkeley this afternoon; as a zoologist, I have to point out that trying to control this problem from the top down is just stupid. I mean, if we kill the predators, will the prey stop over-populating? Given that we could eat the prey ourselves, might that not reduce the likelihood of the predators thinking our habitat is good hunting, there being less, unwary prey? Even six-point bucks don't care about gas-blowers in upscale Berkeley neighborhoods; they just go on eating the rosebuds in the yard next door.

[blueadzuki]

Well, there's kinda a two sided sword here. Obviously few if any municipalities are going to authorize hunting WITHIN city/suburban limits. Making it legal for people to go around town with rifles/bows SHOOTING THEM OFF at the first sign of an animal is just asking for trouble via shots going awry and lawsuits (also making so that the sound of guns going off in town is so common police do not respond to them probably would allow more than a few homicide minded people to get away with and from crimes they would otherwise have been caught on.)

On the other hand, I do think that given the extreme overpopulation having some of the no taking laws relaxed might be a good idea. In fact even those areas where hunting is ALLOWED probably need a little temporary loosening up of things like the bag limit (if there are already excess deer, maybe hunters should be allowed to take more of them per capita, at least until either the population goes down or enough new hunters come in to offset. Maybe even a reversal of the buck to doe limits (if you want to lower a population, taking out the females is usually quicker) and lifting of the "don't kill fawns" rule (each one is a munchhouse in training, and they are probably the tenderest and tastiest of deer).

I suppose the safest option would be some sort of professional culling (drive the animals to somewhere out of town and kill them there) with the meat being distributed to the poor and any trophy pieces awarded via lottery. Of course that TOO would wind up with problems, as people would have issues with giving the poor meat that had not been raised and certified by the USDA. I know that locally, there WAS someone who offered to provide the food bank with Canada geese he had shot, and they turned him down flat for health concerns.)

One warning though, if you ever did get the opportunity, Canada goose isn't supposed to taste all that good. Unless you like your goose REALLY gamey, you'll probably be dissapointed. That's one of the reasons why it is unlikely anyone around here will ever seriously take up duck hunting (even if it was legal everywhere) around here, unless you have a taste for mallard (which is supposedly only middling for table quality), you really don't have many options in terms of wild duck. The only other halfway common ones are common mergansers (which supposedly taste absolutely filthy due to their all fish diet* and hooded mergansers (same). So if you want better you'd basically have to wait for the depths of winter and then go out on the ice covered Hudson in a kayak to try and catch the handful of canvasbacks that stop over there on the way down.

*I have no idea why fish eating ducks are generally considered awful in taste while some fish eating SEA ducks are prized (in the case of the Labrador Duck, prized to extinction.) Maybe it's the kind of fish they eat.

[richardw]

I'm not a great fan of the Mallard duck on its own but stick the meat in with pork and beef they are great in a sausage.

In my younger days working in the high country there was one farmer i knew used to hunt kill great numbers of Canada geese with the use of detonating cord layed out and wheat poured along it, when there were enough birds eating, let her rip. The farmers wife would cook the bird in orange juice and apricots, quite nice munching i thought.