![\"Loading...\"](\"https:\/\/dcs-static.gprod.postmedia.digital\/19.9.2\/websites\/images\/common\/icon-spinner-animated.svg\"){kind=icon}
<\/p>\nWe apologize, but this video has failed to load.<\/p>\n
Play Video<\/p>\n
The giant Canada goose was once thought extinct. Now, our cities and towns are overrun with them \u2014 and the hard truth is that humans are to blame<\/p>\n
Published Nov 06, 2025 \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 Last updated 14\u00a0hours ago \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 21 minute read<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n You can save this article by registering for free here<\/a>. Or sign-in<\/a> if you have an account.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n It\u2019s early fall on a shallow stretch of the Rideau River in Ottawa, a few hundred metres below Hog\u2019s Back Falls. That\u2019s the point where the Rideau Canal splits off from the once-natural waterway it has commandeered as a boat channel for almost 200 years, and where the liberated river finally reasserts its wildness.<\/p>\n In this remnant feral section of the Rideau, which runs past Carleton University, hundreds of Canada geese \u2014 showing an untamed spirit, like the stream that has drawn them here \u2014 are massing in a honking, splashing, fluttering maelstrom of exuberance.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Advertisement 2<\/p>\n This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.<\/p>\n THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS<\/p>\n Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.<\/p>\n Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.<\/p>\n SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE ARTICLES<\/p>\n Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.<\/p>\n Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.<\/p>\n REGISTER \/ SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES<\/p>\n Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.<\/p>\n Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.<\/p>\n THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK.<\/p>\n Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.<\/p>\n Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an Account<\/p>\n or<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n They arrive on this mid-October day every few minutes in gaggles of five, eight, 12. There\u2019s a sense of urgency, it seems, as they descend rapidly from the sky, some of them \u201cwhiffling\u201d \u2014 performing a mid-air body twist that sends the bird plunging sharply \u2014 to hit their chosen landing spot on the water.<\/p>\n Long Story<\/p>\n Thanks for signing up!<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Now and then, an individual frantically skims across the surface of the water in pursuit of another \u2014 half-flying, half-swimming, long black neck aimed low and beak flared \u2014 in what looks like a vigorous game of chase. The behaviour, perhaps a mating or bullying display, will subtly reset the social order within this congress of Branta canadensis, Canada\u2019s iconic white-cheeked goose.<\/p>\n Who knows exactly why they do what they do? Who could say how the alert was spread amongst these birds \u2014 which arrive from different directions, over the course of several hours \u2014 to flock here and now? What magic so finely attunes them to each other, to the rhythms of the day and the cycle of the seasons?<\/p>\n A commuter train rumbles over a bridge above the water. Cars whiz past. We can watch, but the geese are in their own world.<\/p>\n Ottawa naturalist and author Michael Runtz<\/a>, a Carleton biology professor for 40 years before his retirement this year, explains that the city\u2019s population of Canada geese<\/a> in the fall is a combination of stopover birds from the north \u2014 briefly feeding and roosting in Ottawa on their epic migration between sub-Arctic Canada and the U.S. South \u2014 and \u201cresident\u201d birds that stick around for all or most of the year.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Different subspecies of Canada geese are hard to distinguish, especially when they\u2019re in the water. If, among the river birds, there are some true migrants, they would be in the midst of a classic Canada goose odyssey \u2014 2,500 kilometres, say, from breeding grounds off the east coast of Hudson Bay to wintering sites in the Carolinas or neighbouring states.<\/p>\n Such transient geese would probably belong to the subspecies Branta canadensis interior, ancient travellers of the Atlantic Flyway, with Canada\u2019s capital region a convenient, river-rich, midway pit stop.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s likely these birds on the Rideau River on this particular day are mostly \u201cgiant\u201d Canada geese \u2014 Branta canadensis maxima<\/a> \u2014 the dominant breed in many cities across Southern Canada and the Northern U.S. The journey for these \u201cmaxima\u201d might be a mere 1.5-km short-hop flight to a widening of the river just above the Hog\u2019s Back dam at Mooney\u2019s Bay, a popular nighttime roosting site for waterfowl.<\/p>\n This heftier subspecies makes up the resident populations Runtz described \u2014 and they are the so-called \u201cnuisance\u201d geese that almost never travel far from any of their home cities, even in the depths of winter.<\/p>\n And even though we often wish they would.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n \u2018We can only blame ourselves\u2019<\/p>\n Geese of the maxima breed have become a scourge of urban Canada and the United States. Typically weighing 12 to 18 pounds, they will sometimes commingle with their migrating cousins and even influence the behaviour of the visitors, altering their traditional travel patterns.<\/p>\n The giant Canadas are infamous for swarming parks and golf courses to graze on mowed lawns, for befouling recreational pathways and public beaches, and for hissing or even charging at humans who dare to walk or cycle too close to them.<\/p>\n These big geese drop gooey, greenish poop in prodigious quantities almost everywhere they go. They can be vectors for avian influenza and other pathogens. They can damage crops, degrade landscapes and even threaten vulnerable plant species because of their overabundance in many places. Around airports, they pose one of the most serious risks of all bird species for colliding with planes \u2014 their great size and flying behaviours intensifying the danger.<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, across the continent, nuisance populations of giant Canada geese have prompted extensive and expensive municipal campaigns<\/a> of harassment using drones and dogs, birth control by egg-oiling or egg-addling (shaking) and \u2014 in relatively few instances, so far \u2014 straight-up killing of birds where numbers have swollen to unmanageable excess.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n The birds can be hunted across Canada, typically in the fall \u2014 but only outside urban boundaries, of course. Hunting limits are sometimes eased to reduce goose populations, but the giant Canadas have learned that city living offers ample food supplies and affords excellent protection from predators \u2014 including humans with guns.<\/p>\n Many times, Runtz says, he has watched geese gather on the Rideau next to Carleton\u2019s campus. Like everyone else at the university in recent years, he\u2019s also seen the surfeit of nuisance geese clustered on campus green spaces, munching grass and relentlessly dumping turds on lawns and sidewalks, bike paths and parking lots.<\/p>\n For now, they are tolerated. But summing up the long-term challenge facing many Canadian and U.S. cities, Runtz says, \u201cIt may come to a point where the annoyance factor exceeds the desire to protect the animal.\u201d<\/p>\n Like all Canada geese, the giants have some endearing traits. They mate for life and dote on their fuzzball yellow young. Their flocks form postcard armadas on mirror-like lakes, and they sometimes fly \u2014 even short distances \u2014 in those breathtaking phalanxes of honking vees.<\/p>\n Among the main reasons we have so many giant Canada geese in their namesake nation is because families love to watch them, hunters love to harvest them and \u2014 for about 25 years in the late 20th century \u2014 wildlife advocates eager to satisfy those two constituencies, as well as their own mandates, loved launching programs to build up Canada goose numbers.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n \u201cThe animals are the innocent participants in this,\u201d Runtz says of the continent\u2019s giant Canada goose overpopulation crisis. \u201cThey never asked to be bred and nurtured. And so, we can only blame ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n The giant Canada geese on the river this day might be gathering to fly only a few minutes upstream, or to a stubbly cornfield on the outskirts of the city, or to an overnight roost on a cottage lake. They may well be coming soon to a playground or fairway near you.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s easier to appreciate Branta canadensis maxima after learning that the giant Canada goose was thought to be vanished from the Earth less than a human lifetime ago.<\/p>\n \u2018Appears to be extinct\u2019<\/p>\n Yes, you read that right. The largest subspecies of Canada goose that has overrun so many of our picnic grounds, soccer fields and business parks in the early 21st century was presumed extinct in the mid-20th, an apparent victim of generations of settlement-era overhunting and habitat destruction, particularly the draining of wetlands.<\/p>\n \u201cThe giant Canada goose appears to be extinct,\u201d the renowned French-American ornithologist Jean Th\u00e9odore Delacour wrote in his landmark 1954 treatise, The Waterfowl of the World. There were numerous such references to the bird\u2019s demise in the scholarly literature of the time; the giant Canada was \u201cforever gone,\u201d as the distinguished Manitoba naturalist Hans Albert Hochbaum<\/a> put it in his 1955 classic, Travels and Traditions of Waterfowl.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n The backstory of B. canadensis maxima is complicated by the fact that research by Delacour and another famed ornithologist \u2014 California birder James Moffitt, namesake of a smaller West Coast subspecies called Branta canadensis moffitti \u2014 had only belatedly earned the scientific community\u2019s recognition that the giant Canada goose ever existed at all, and wasn\u2019t just a myth propagated by boastful hunters in the late 1800s and early 1900s.<\/p>\n Still, maxima was widely considered a lost life form until January 1962. That month, a group of wildlife experts in Minnesota sought the expertise of Dr. Harold Hanson \u2014 a goose specialist with the Illinois Natural History Survey<\/a> \u2014 to help create a management plan for a mysterious flock of about 4,000 Canada geese wintering on a reservoir in the Upper Midwest state.<\/p>\n The geese had discovered an oasis of warm water in Silver Lake, an artificial widening of the Zumbro River just north of downtown Rochester, Minn. There, downstream discharges from an electrical power plant built in the 1930s kept the basin from freezing over even in the coldest weeks of the year.<\/p>\n The flock included a few dozen Canada geese originally kept in a nearby pond owned by the Mayo family \u2014 founders of Rochester\u2019s world-famous medical clinic. Those ornamental birds had been relocated to Silver Lake in the 1940s, where they joined the migrant geese of unknown origin.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n As the Rochester flock grew year after year in their \u201chot tub\u201d reservoir, Minnesota wildlife officials became eager to know more about the habits and spring breeding grounds of the migrant birds \u2014 especially since local hunters were pushing for permission to start shooting.<\/p>\n Instead, state conservation authorities declared Silver Lake a wildlife refuge, protecting the flock. And when Hanson arrived in Rochester in mid-January 1962, a landmark moment in ornithological history was about to unfold.<\/p>\n He later wrote about his excitement at being given \u201cthe opportunity to solve this wildlife riddle \u2026 On that memorable day, the temperature held around zero and a strong wind blew, but this only added zest to the enterprise.\u201d After firing a net gun to humanely trap some of the Silver Lake birds for study and banding,\u00a0Hanson was struck by the enormous size of many of the geese, their six-foot-plus wing spans wider than those of the Illinois subspecies, B. canadensis interior, that he had been researching for years in his home state.<\/p>\n Some of the birds were weighed at a lakeside workstation. Hanson and his Minnesota colleagues were perplexed when the bigger geese they\u2019d trapped tipped their scales at 14 pounds or more.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n \u201cThe work proceeded smoothly, except for one hitch \u2014 we were obviously using faulty scales,\u201d Hanson recounted in his 1965 masterwork, The Giant Canada Goose<\/a>. \u201cThe only question was, \u2018How faulty?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n A team member purchased a 10-pound bag of flour and five pounds of sugar from a local grocer. Both weights were verified on a scale at the store.<\/p>\n \u201cUpon our return to the banding site, a quick test of the scales revealed that the \u2018impossible weights\u2019 we had been getting were correct,\u201d Hanson wrote. \u201cNow we knew beyond question that we were dealing with a very large race. But what race? The giant Canada goose had been repeatedly written into extinction and could not be a possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanson reread the research by Delacour and other authorities who had gathered testimonials about giant Canada geese \u2014 some beyond 20 pounds \u2014 from birders and hunters a generation ago, or more. He compared their descriptions with the traits of the Silver Lake geese.<\/p>\n Only then, he wrote, \u201cdid I realize that the Rochester flock had to be Branta canadensis maxima!\u201d<\/p>\n Scientists like Harold Hanson don\u2019t use exclamation marks lightly. The discovery on Silver Lake was monumental, and he knew it.<\/p>\n The next step was identifying the spring nesting sites of the migrant birds and launching a full-scale recovery and repopulation effort.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Hanson traced the giant Canadas\u2019 primary breeding grounds to south-central Manitoba \u2014 the Interlake region, a world-renowned habitat for ducks and geese between Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipeg, and a few other waterfowl refuges in the southern part of the province.<\/p>\n News of Hanson\u2019s discoveries was soon grabbing headlines across North America. \u201cExtinct Canada Geese Found in Vast Flocks,\u201d read a Hamilton Spectator story published Sept. 1, 1962. A Canadian Press reporter, who interviewed Hanson during his late-summer visit to the Delta Waterfowl Research Station on the south shore of Lake Manitoba, recounted the scientist\u2019s eureka moment with the Silver Lake flock: \u201cHe discovered the birds were the rare giant Canada goose, believed for years to have gone the way of the Dodo.\u201d<\/p>\n The news broke months before the U.S. Department of the Interior finally issued a formal statement celebrating Hanson\u2019s accomplishment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world\u2019s largest wild goose, the giant Canada, which for over thirty years was thought to be extinct, has been rediscovered in Minnesota,\u201d the agency proclaimed in April 1963. \u201c\u2026 Dr. Hanson is credited with discovering that the giant goose is not only still around, but even appears to have a sizable population that is adapting to man\u2019s changes of its environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n The U.S. government\u2019s highlighting of the giant Canada goose\u2019s apparent adaptability to human-altered landscapes was an omen that might have raised some red flags, or at least a few questions.<\/p>\n Honk if you see where this is going.<\/p>\n \u2018Play havoc with air traffic\u2019<\/p>\n To say there was widespread excitement in North America over the rediscovery of the giant Canada goose is seriously understating the maxima fervour sparked by Hanson\u2019s 1962 achievement. Over the next quarter-century, there was a concerted push by countless conservation groups, hunting clubs, local governments, state agencies, provincial ministries, research institutes, private landowners and others to ensure that the lost-and-found subspecies would rebound spectacularly from the brink of extinction.<\/p>\n But it was becoming clear as early as the mid-1970s that a potential problem was developing. A giant Canadas breeding project on Toronto Island offered a glimpse of what was to come after many well-intentioned stakeholders \u2014 including the Ontario government \u2014 secured breeding pairs and got into the game of raising wild geese.<\/p>\n \u201cAll wildlife agencies around the Great Lakes were electrified by the news and not the least of these was Ontario\u2019s Department of Lands and Forests,\u201d reported the Hamilton Spectator in March 1975, recalling Hanson\u2019s discovery in Minnesota more than a decade earlier and the continental goose-reproduction juggernaut it set in motion.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n \u201cThe few precious pairs of giant geese were divided among the various agencies, with Ontario being fortunate enough to acquire enough breeders and eggs to form the nucleus of what, today, is an ever-expanding giant Canada goose population that numbers in the thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n On Toronto Island, though, the situation was \u201cgood and bad,\u201d the Spectator reported.<\/p>\n \u201cThe habitat must be good for geese, because the original flock of one goose, one gander and five goslings planted in 1969 has increased to approximately 1,000 birds,\u201d the newspaper noted after interviewing provincial conservation officer Ken Faulkner.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the same time, the situation is bad for the geese. It would be fine if they confined their activities to the large parkland of lawns and trees, the numerous lagoons and some untouched islands. However, some of the geese nest and graze close to the Island airport.<\/p>\n \u201cA negligent gosling can scare the daylights out of pilots and play havoc with air traffic, Mr. Faulkner said.\u201d<\/p>\n The solution? According to the story, during nesting season each spring, more than 200 eggs were collected from Toronto Island and \u201cpacked in wood shavings and delivered the same day to the Orillia Rod and Gun Club for incubation.\u201d After six or seven weeks, the 120 or so surviving hatchlings were \u201cdistributed to various points to strengthen or establish new flocks.\u201d<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Multiply that resounding success story a few thousand times across Canada and the U.S., and the origin of the 21st-century giant Canada goose crisis comes into sharp focus.<\/p>\n \u2018Exponential\u2019 population growth<\/p>\n Return of the Giants, an award-winning Canadian nature documentary that aired nationally on CBC in 1972, perfectly captured the spirit of the times. Narrated by Ottawa-born actor Lorne Greene of Bonanza fame, the film chronicles the success of a Guelph, Ont.-based goose-breeding project and includes scenes where filmmakers John and Janet Foster hand-feed a friendly flock of giant Canadas from the shore of an urban lake.<\/p>\n By 1996, University of Western Ontario zoologist Davison Ankney was warning that North America\u2019s maxima breeding programs had produced uncontrollably \u201cexponential\u201d population growth and \u201calarming\u201d results, including the draining of wetlands by some private landowners as a \u201cpermanent solution to their \u2018goose problems.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough current populations of these birds, once thought extinct, represent a major achievement of waterfowl management, it is clear that there are too many of these birds in many areas,\u201d Ankney wrote in the Journal of Wildlife Management, advocating much looser restrictions on hunting the bids.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Illinois waterfowl ecologist Dr. Auriel Fournier, who conducts research with the same organization where Hanson carried out his groundbreaking work in the 1960s, acknowledges the failure of wildlife agencies, scientists and governments to foresee the runaway overpopulation of giant Canada geese.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem we have is actually of our own making,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is a conservation success story, even if it is also very much a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanson, who died at age 85 in 2003, was long gone before Fournier joined the INHS\u2019s Forbes Biological Station<\/a> in 2019. Now the station director, she said Hanson left a proud legacy among Illinois naturalists despite the modern-day fallout from his rediscovery of the giant Canada goose.<\/p>\n \u201cBroadly across wildlife management, we have a lot of examples where we\u2019ve moved animals around the landscape for a goal that was perhaps a good one, and it had some unintended consequences,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone predicted how well Canada geese would learn to take advantage of urban landscapes, right? I one-hundred-per-cent understand people\u2019s frustration with Canada geese. I often try to help them see it, maybe, through a little more positive lens \u2014 like these animals are amazing adapters. They have learned how to live with us, and that\u2019s not an easy thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n At the same time, Fournier says the ever-increasing numbers of nuisance geese in major cities \u2014 Chicago among them, in her state \u2014 likely means a difficult reckoning around the wider use of lethal goose-population controls in the future.<\/p>\n She says research has shown that goose deterrence strategies \u2014 whether dogs or drones<\/a> or the remote-control toy dune buggy<\/a> recently deployed by the City of Ottawa at the Mooney\u2019s Bay beach \u2014 don\u2019t seem to work effectively over the long term: \u201cEspecially smarter animals, like a goose, if they learn that the thing doesn\u2019t kill them and the resource they want is still there, they\u2019re going to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Stephen Havera<\/a>, a semi-retired emeritus scientist with the INHS, worked for decades with Hanson.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a lot of interaction over the years, and camaraderie,\u201d says Havera, remembering his late colleague\u2019s inexhaustible passion for studying Canada geese, and collecting specimens of the various subspecies everywhere around the continent.<\/p>\n He describes Hanson\u2019s rediscovery of maxima as \u201ca major victory\u201d for wildlife conservation, \u201cto the point where now there\u2019s several million of them, for something that was thought to be extinct \u2026 I mean, it\u2019s like the comeback of the bald eagle once we got rid of DDT.\u201d<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Havera, author of his own landmark 1999 volume on ducks, geese and other Midwest bird life, The Waterfowl of Illinois, described the overpopulation challenge with giant Canada geese as \u201ca tough nut to crack.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re so adaptive to interaction with humans,\u201d says Havera, noting how giant Canadas have thrived thanks to the postwar expansion of manicured parkland, including golf courses and other sports fields, as well as ornamental ponds in urban and suburban America.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no hunting pressure on them or anything else,\u201d he notes, running through some of the management efforts aimed at cutting the severe surplus of resident Canada geese in the Chicago area: harassment campaigns, landscape modification, even slaughtering some of the birds and supplying the meat to city food banks.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve tried everything they can, but a lot of times Mother Nature is a lot smarter than we are,\u201d he says. Giant Canada geese \u201care so adaptive they\u2019re nesting on the rooftops of those big buildings in Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n Nonetheless, Havera confesses to a deep affection for Canada geese. On a pond at his rural Illinois property, he\u2019s built nesting structures to attract breeding pairs that produce goslings every year.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n \u201cI enjoy watching the young ones.\u201d<\/p>\n Havera says Hanson \u201cwould not be surprised by the degree of adaptability of these creatures. Obviously, they were almost killed off because they were so big and probably somewhat vulnerable historically. But I would say that he\u2019s probably kind of grinning a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n Accused of causing near-disaster<\/p>\n In January 2009, a collision with a flock of Canada geese famously knocked out both engines of United Airways Flight 1549 shortly after takeoff from New York City\u2019s LaGuardia Airport. Pilot Chesley \u201cSully\u201d Sullenberger, in what\u2019s been hailed as one of the greatest feats of flying in aviation history, ditched the plane in the Hudson River and saved all 155 lives on board.<\/p>\n The \u201cMiracle on the Hudson<\/a>\u201d ignited a debate in the weeks and months following the averted disaster about how New York and other cities \u2014 especially along airport flight paths \u2014 should deal with the overabundance of non-migrating giant Canada geese.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n The debate led to swift action. Out of an estimated 20,000 resident maxima inhabiting New York City at the time, more than 1,200 were killed that summer.<\/p>\n \u201cThe exercise was politely termed a round up, not an extermination, but none of the geese herded out of the water with kayaks and corralled behind plastic barriers would live to see the autumn leaves,\u201d the New York Times reported in October 2009. \u201cInstead, they were packed in turkey crates and taken away to be gassed \u2026 The city had had its vengeance.\u201d<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n But there was an interesting footnote to the cull. Ornithologists with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Field Museum in Chicago compared the goose feathers recovered from the plane\u2019s engines with the world\u2019s largest research collection of Canada goose specimens in a bid to determine the geographic origin of the \u201cculprit\u201d birds in the downing of Flight 1549.<\/p>\n Using isotope analysis of the materials under study, the scientists were able to determine conclusively that the geese struck by the passenger jet were not, in fact, resident giant Canadas living year-round in New York, but a flock of migratory birds that had flown from Labrador to spend the winter of 2009 on the Atlantic shore in the southeast corner of New York state. The giants were innocent.<\/p>\n The solving of the mystery and \u2014 in a sense \u2014 the exoneration of the giant Canada goose in the forced ditching of Flight 1549 would not have been possible, the researchers noted, without the \u201ctruly amazing collection of Canada geese made by wildfowl biologist Harold Hanson.\u201d The hundreds of carcasses Hanson had collected during his career had been donated to the Field Museum after his death and before the Miracle on the Hudson.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Saving Wilson<\/p>\n In Ottawa, Runtz has recently begun clearing out his office at Carleton University, a one-of-a-kind workspace stuffed with dozens upon dozens of taxidermied mammal, reptile and bird specimens, including several Canada geese.<\/p>\n He\u2019s one of the country\u2019s keenest observers of animal behaviour \u2014 so widely regarded for his expertise that he served as a wolf-howling consultant<\/a> on one of Sir David Attenborough\u2019s nature documentaries, 2024\u2019s Secret World of Sound.<\/p>\n He recently walked among a herd of several dozen giant Canadas feasting and lounging on mowed grass near the university\u2019s main entrance. The birds exhibited only mild wariness, taking a few steps left or right as the bemused biologist passed by.<\/p>\n They were equally reluctant to move aside when a speeding cyclist sounded his horn, a mimicked goose honk. The cyclist was forced to brake as the birds sauntered too slowly off a bike path strewn with plops of their poop.<\/p>\n Scientific studies suggest the Canada goose has been around in roughly its current form for nearly three million years. That\u2019s about one million years before human beings began to definitively distinguish themselves from their fellow apes.<\/p>\n Canada geese have been seriously annoying humans for about 30 years, or .0001 per cent of their evolutionary history. The birds have a backstory beyond our imagining.<\/p>\n Article content<\/p>\n Runtz, an award-winning wildlife advocate, said he\u2019s reluctantly concluded that authorities in many North American jurisdictions will eventually have to carry out highly unpopular lethal culls to get their goose problems under control.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s tough,\u201d he says. \u201cWe played God with the species initially, bringing back its numbers way beyond what they were originally. But if you try to play God and control their numbers, then you\u2019re the devil \u2026 It\u2019s always going to be a conundrum.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"National](\"https:\/\/dcs-static.gprod.postmedia.digital\/19.9.2\/websites\/images\/identity\/logo-identity-np-new.svg\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n![\"Canada](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-ottawa-rideau.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=_RxrekB6xSfZCIwofRXaNA\")
Canada geese on the Rideau River in Ottawa. Photo by Tracy Sanford\/Postmedia News<\/p>\n![\"Long](\"https:\/\/dcs-static.gprod.postmedia.digital\/19.9.2\/websites\/images\/newsletters\/icon-longStory.svg\"\/){kind=icon}
<\/p>\n![\"Former](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-ottawa-runtz.jpg?location=full_width&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=Ztrd6rGK15_h6s_6SzNsYA\")
Researcher and retired Carleton University professor Mike Runtz strolls through a campus parking area filled with Canada geese in October 2025. Photo by Julie Oliver\/Postmedia News<\/p>\n![\"Canada](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-montreal.jpg?location=full_width&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=cVnW94u_4tCTyzSi0S_JxA\")
Canada geese are kings of the walk on a bike path in the LaSalle neighbourhood on the Island of Montreal in July 2025. Photo by Dave Sidaway\/Postmedia News<\/p>\n![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-minnesota-hanson.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=4Beh9iy7Xrtjbbm5GsloKQ\")
Dr. Harold Hanson in the 1960s. The wildlife biologist from the Illinois Natural History Survey was the first to identify a wintering flock of Canada geese in Minnesota as Branta canadensis maxima. Photo by Illinois Natural History Survey<\/p>\n![\"Canada](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-beaver-pond.jpg?location=full_width&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=EoQYEMtawTUXZzmY2jL9kg\")
Canada geese change beaver ponds in Harold Creek west of Water Valley, Alta., in April 2025. Photo by Mike Drew\/Postmedia News<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-sandbar-nova-scotia.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=Epo_f7WbUlGX87ZMIJG55w\")
A flock of Canada geese departs from a sandbar along the Shubenacadie River, near Shubenacadie, N.S., in September 2024. Photo by TIM KROCHAK\/Postmedia News<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-calgary.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=rgxSJmRmmF2_zAaiEhJy7g\")
A Canada goose brings traffic to a standstill in July 2025 as it crosses a street in downtown Calgary. Photo by Brent Calver\/Postmedia News<\/p>\n![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-auriel-fournier.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=K1grgwgr0tcI0iiHDVq5-Q\")
\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone predicted how well Canada geese would learn to take advantage of urban landscapes,\u201d says Dr. Auriel Fournier, an Illinois waterfowl ecologist. Photo by \u00a9 Illinois Natural History Survey<\/p>\n![\"Canada](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-dartmouth-kayak.jpg?location=full_width&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=mCEl32FgHP-5U0oJR2LmDg\")
Canada geese swim alongside K-4 paddlers on Lake Banook in Dartmouth, N.S., in October 2025. Photo by TIM KROCHAK\/Postmedia News<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-toronto.jpg?location=full_width&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=D7B-uRjEgPHfS02cqAliQg\")
A flock forages in the grass beside the Lakeshore Boulevard boardwalk in Toronto in late October 2025. Photo by Peter J. Thompson\/National Post<\/p>\n![\"Wilson,](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-wilson.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=K0Khhou6z_6wcZmSHqScwA\")
Wilson, a Canada goose that survived being struck by an arrow, was spotted by nature photographer Tim Cyr in July 2024. Photo by Tim Cyr<\/p>\n
![\"Tim](\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/nationalpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Canada-geese-conservation-wildlife-science-nuisance-wilson-cyr.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=Hx6IdBjhZsBc4U4Yz0U2TQ\")
\u201cI just love wildlife. And it was an injury that was human-caused. Once I\u2019d seen that, I thought, \u2018There\u2019s no way.\u2019 I\u2019ve got to help him, right?\u201d says Tim Cyr of his months\u2019-long quest to assist Wilson. Photo by Tim Cyr<\/p>\n