Seney National Wildlife Refuge - Canada Geese

Canada Geese

When the Seney National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1935, the Canada goose was a threatened species. Widespread, year-round hunting (legal and illegal) had reduced the North American population of free-flying Canada geese to a trickle of birds who avoided human beings as much as possible. One of the priorities of the new Seney NWR was to establish a refuge for free-flying Canada geese.

In January 1936, during the first winter of the Seney Refuge's operation, the refuge trucked in 300 pinioned Canada geese. These flightless geese were given a fenced-in pond area within the Refuge and were fed. It was hoped that they would produce a crop of goslings that would establish a migratory pattern of behavior and voluntarily return to the Refuge. The goslings were banded so that if they returned, the Refuge's small staff would know it.

Every year a shrinking crop of Canada goslings was hatched and flew south for the winter, but few or none returned in the following spring to Seney. Poaching was apparently continuing in the geese wintering grounds and on the flyways. Meanwhile the parent population of wing-clipped Canada geese diminished between 1936 and 1945 from 300 to 45.

March, 1946 saw the first significant return of sixteen banded, free-flying Canada geese. This tiny flock bred true in the following years. The Seney Canada goose breeding population had multiplied to 3,000 birds by 1956, and continued to expand thereafter even after local hunting was re-legalized. The Seney National Wildlife Refuge's Canada goose project is considered to have been one of the key programs in re-establishing the Canada goose as a major wetland bird of North America.