Canada Goose

Maryland's second experimental hunting season for resident Canada geese will run from Sept. 6-15 this year, with the addition of all or portions of six Eastern Shore counties.Another change for this year will be a requirement that all hunters have a migratory bird harvest information program permit, a free form that will be available where they buy their hunting licenses. State and federal stamps also must be purchased, and a free September Canada goose season permit also must be acquired and carried while hunting.

Speakout! THE ISSUE: --Long a nusiance in the area, Canada geese are dropping a pound a day each of excrement on paths and docks at Lake Elkhorn and other locations around the county. Should government officials step in and take action, perhaps rounding up the nonmigratory birds and using the meat to feed the homeless? There has been no such idea proposed formally for Howard, but similar approaches have been used in communities in other parts of the country. Offer the droppings as garden fertilizer I think most people love seeing the birds; it adds some life to their enjoyment of Columbia's lakes.

Maryland's November Canada goose count has shown an appreciable increase over 1989, with 377,666 honkers counted in aerial surveys completed last week. The comparable count last year was 287,000.Most of the honkers were on the upper Eastern Shore, with 134,732 counted in the Chester River area alone -- in addition to 39,706 snow geese and 7,838 tundra swans. Five years ago the Maryland count was 450,436.But one survey a season does not make because weather can play a part in waterfowl distribution on the Delmarva Peninsula.

Federal officials yesterday said they will ease restrictions on hunting the migratory Canada goose population - a potential big boost to the Eastern Shore's fall economy. The decision comes a decade after the imposition of a complete ban on hunting migratory Canada geese, in a bid to save the dwindling population. The ban was lifted in 2001, but with hunters limited to one bird a day. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials yesterday confirmed that the Atlantic Flyway goose population, which breeds in northern Canada and spends winters here, has rebounded to levels not seen since 1988.

The Department of Natural Resources is proposing a two-part Canada goose season for 1991-92 that will cover 59 calendar days and again provide for one goose per day in the first split and two geese per day in the second.The first session will run from Nov. 12-29 and the second session would run from Dec. 9-Jan. 18.In developing the proposal, a key consideration was the guidelines of the Canada Goose Management Plan. The major objectives of that plan are to have a three-year midwinter average of 400,000 geese in Maryland by 1995 and to maintain the harvest rate at 20 percent.

Although Maryland's proposed Canada goose hunting seasons drew the most attention last week, the Department of Natural Resources also released its proposals for its other waterfowl seasons, including snow geese and ducks.According to the Fall Flight Forecast of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which must approve Maryland's proposed season, the overall breeding population of ducks is down 11 percent from last year. But the fall flight to the Atlantic Flyway is expected to be similar to last year's.

The November Canada goose survey produced a population estimate of 333,584, down from 377,666 estimated in Maryland at the same time last year.The survey, conducted Nov. 12-15 by personnel from the Department of Natural Resources as well as federal and private wildlife interest groups, is used to monitor long-term trends in wintering populations of Canada geese.On the Eastern Shore, 322,758 Canadas were counted, with the largest number (103,770) observed in the Chester River area. Western Kent County (44,487)

Early last week, the Department of Natural Resources released its proposal for the 1992-93 Canada goose hunting seasons and limits in Maryland. The proposal is restrictive and will have an adverse impact on goose hunters and guides this year and at least for the next two years.In brief, the proposal calls for 52 days of hunting spread over 60 calendar days, within which 18 days would be at a one-bird limit and 34 at a two-bird limit. The season splits are Nov. 16-Nov. 27, one bird; Dec. 4-Dec.

Each January, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state departments of natural resources conduct the Midwinter Waterfowl Survey across the country as part of a continuing, long-term study of migratory populations of ducks, geese and swans.In Maryland this year, according to statistics released by the Department of Natural Resources, the state's waterfowl count is up more than 27,000 over last year.However, according to biologists, the gain is largely attributable to increases in duck populations and Canada goose numbers were significantly lower.

CHESTERTOWN -- Some hours earlier, as Dutch Swonger steered with his knees and juggled a thermos of hot coffee and &&TC small, red cup, we had trundled east on Route 301 and up Route 213 from the Sportsman's Service Center in Grasonville.Before first light, Swonger, a waterfowl hunting guide in Queen Anne's and Kent counties, had begun to talk of the pleasures and pains of the closed world of waterfowl hunting on the Eastern Shore."I've been hunting here for 30 years and had my own guide service for 10 of those," Swonger said, as he refilled the coffee cup and steam condensed on the windshield.

EASTON - The bird that was once King of the Eastern Shore has returned to its exalted perch. Early tomorrow morning, hundreds of hunters will camp out on the edges of marshes, fields and ponds, poised with shotguns to resume a tradition that helps define life on the Eastern Shore: goose hunting. That's a marked change from the situation less than a decade ago, when state and federal officials were so alarmed by the dwindling migratory Canada goose population that they banned all hunting of the geese.

Two leading wildlife advocacy groups charged yesterday that plans to relax federal regulations would lead to mass killings of resident Canada geese. The proposed rules would eliminate the requirement that state and local agencies get federal permits for specific methods of reducing the resident Canada goose population. Biologists say the bird's numbers in the United States should be cut by a third, to about 2 million. "We think this will lead to the wholesale killing of hundreds of thousands of these birds over a 10-year period," said John Hadidian, director of urban wildlife programs at the Humane Society of the United States and a former regional wildlife biologist at the National Park Service.

EASTON - It's Thanksgiving week, and the venerable Tidewater Inn here in the heart of the Talbot County seat is booked solid. Guests are arriving from all over the East Coast, and the staff is reviving a hotel favorite - the 4:30 a.m. breakfast buffet. Across Harrison Street, gun shop owner Larry Albright has extended his hours and will open the store on a Sunday for the first time in years. Down in Trappe, outfitter Bo Kennedy is dressed head to foot in camouflage and tramping around 2,000 acres of leased farmland and marsh, waiting.

MARYLAND's decision to reopen the Canada goose hunting season after a six-year ban recognizes the success of wildlife conservation measures - and favorable weather conditions in northern breeding grounds. It's also a recognition that things won't be the way they once were, when Maryland goose hunting winters drew nationwide attention and fueled a $50 million industry on the Eastern Shore. Despite some political grousing, the state was correct to keep the ban for the past two years. Very tight restrictions would have been needed to protect the species' recovery, which didn't appeal to many hunters.

A RESURGENCE in the numbers of migratory Canada geese over the past four years has prompted the state (and Atlantic region) to again open hunting season on the waterfowl that is our state bird.The hunting hiatus allowed the closely monitored goose population to jump from 29,000 nesting pairs in 1995 to 77,500 pairs this year at their summer home on Quebec's Ungava Peninsula. Biologists say limiting hunters to shooting no more than 5 percent of the migrating population will allow the Canada goose numbers to continue to grow robustly.

For decades, Maryland's Eastern Shore was the place to hunt Canada geese -- until the shooting was stopped in 1995 because hunting pressure had become too great and annual breeding populations had become too small.And where once, within blinds strategically set near ponds and fields, booted and bundled hunters passed thermoses and flasks and anxious retrievers awaited the first shots on the crisp mornings of late autumn and early winter, there was prolonged silence.Now, after four seasons of closure throughout the Atlantic Flyway, the governments of the United States and Canada have decided to allow tightly restricted hunting seasons on migratory Canada geese from Quebec to Virginia.

EASTON - It's Thanksgiving week, and the venerable Tidewater Inn here in the heart of the Talbot County seat is booked solid. Guests are arriving from all over the East Coast, and the staff is reviving a hotel favorite - the 4:30 a.m. breakfast buffet. Across Harrison Street, gun shop owner Larry Albright has extended his hours and will open the store on a Sunday for the first time in years. Down in Trappe, outfitter Bo Kennedy is dressed head to foot in camouflage and tramping around 2,000 acres of leased farmland and marsh, waiting.

A RESURGENCE in the numbers of migratory Canada geese over the past four years has prompted the state (and Atlantic region) to again open hunting season on the waterfowl that is our state bird.The hunting hiatus allowed the closely monitored goose population to jump from 29,000 nesting pairs in 1995 to 77,500 pairs this year at their summer home on Quebec's Ungava Peninsula. Biologists say limiting hunters to shooting no more than 5 percent of the migrating population will allow the Canada goose numbers to continue to grow robustly.

As the rain began to fall yesterday on Maryland's Eastern Shore, a gaggle of Canada geese lunched on a cornfield's leftover grain. The geese outnumbered the hunters 800-to-none -- a federally mandated advantage that may save the birds from a population free fall.Three hunting seasons into a moratorium on shooting migratory Canada geese, the birds are showing signs of a resurgence, said Larry Hindman, a waterfowl project manager for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. With reports of a gosling baby boom last summer in northern Quebec, Hindman expects this winter's Maryland survey to show a significant population increase.

MIGRATORY GEESE have returned from Maryland to their nesting grounds in the Canadian north. The January count of Atlantic Flyway waterfowl found sharply divergent trends for the two most prominent species. This could presage a major change in wildlife management.The Canada goose is still in decline, after two years of a hunting ban. Bad weather in the northern Quebec tundra limited reproduction of the bird that symbolizes Chesapeake waterfowl and was long the mainstay of Maryland hunting.