State's Goose Population Marked

Some of the state’s Canada geese population had bands placed on their feet by the Pennsylvania Game Commission early this morning, as an attempt to track hunting rates and population growth. Every three to five years, about 1% of the birds’ population is banded; this means about 2,500 to 3,000 geese will be marked this year. Game Commission biologist Kevin Jacobs says the state worries more about overpopulation than sparseness, and the testing is done to determine how much the geese should be hunted. “There are very few natural predators of Canada geese. Coyotes are one that we have. So, hunting is a very important tool that we have in Pennsylvania,” says Jacobs. He says the population of the geese has nearly tripled since the 1980s, with about 290,000 of the birds nesting in the Commonwealth this year.