FROM TOO FEW TO TOO MANY--Aleutian goose's rebound a problem for agriculture

[XemaSab]

It was a cool, clear dawn, and the sky was full of Aleutian geese, a bird long known as one of America's most endangered species. Mitch Farro and Dave Steiner, supine in camouflaged blinds near a pond surrounded with goose decoys, hoped to kill a few.

A flock of yelping geese wheeled over the decoys. Farro put a goose call to his lips, returned their cries, and the birds dipped lower. As they cupped their wings and prepared to settle on the pond, Steiner fired, knocking down two of them.

"That's a pretty bird," said Steiner, as he took one of the geese from his Labrador retriever, Maude. He pinched the goose's sternum. "Very fat. Been eating lots of grass."

A few years ago, Steiner and Farro would have faced heavy fines -- perhaps some jail time -- for shooting Aleutians, one of the smaller members of the Canada goose complex, which contains two species and at least six subspecies. In the 1970s, the Aleutian goose population was below 1,000. The bird was declared endangered in 1967, under a special designation that predated the 1971 U.S. Endangered Species Act.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/11/BAGDBOJ7HR1.DTL