As it turns out, the giant Canada goose is about as foreign to Illinois as French toast.
The fact may surprise people convinced that the lawn-loving waterfowl is a menace that swooped into our relatively pleasant climes from the north country, but it was one of several take-home messages Chicagoland’s goose experts conveyed Thursday at “Keep `Em Flying,” a conference devoted to dealing with the birds.
Even organizers of the conference in DuPage County seemed a little confused as to the origins of northeast Illinois’ local flocks, treating them like travelers with expired visas. “May the immigrant geese that have become resident in DuPage County find their former place in that `V’ formation in the sky on their way back to Canada!” said the conference brochure.
But the giant Canada goose–so called because it is the meatiest of the species, weighing up to 18 pounds–found in Illinois has in fact made a homecoming.
“They are a native species to Illinois, for sure,” said Charles Paine, a biologist with the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation in East Dundee.
The geese were deliberately introduced by the Des Plaines Game Farm in Wilmington in the 1960s and 1970s, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study circulated at the conference. In the 1950s, the giant subspecies was thought to be extinct.
“It’s not a matter of our department putting them in a place where they weren’t. It was really re-establishing them in a place where they were,” said Roy Domazlicky, who as manager of the one-man Urban Waterfowl Project for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources oversees state goose management.
Illinois is home to 83,850 Canada geese, Domazlicky said.
Held in a wedding hall near Downers Grove, the one-day conference that attracted about 80 participants included presentations on everything from plans to cull thousands of Canada geese to “The Microbiology of Goose Feces: Public Health Implications.” The conclusion of the latter study, by Benedictine University researcher Monica Tischler, is that the public appears safe for now.
Domazlicky said the numbers of resident Canada geese have not grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. He added that even the relatively chunky giant Canada geese get off their haunches from time to time and migrate.
But they have their nests in Illinois and elsewhere in the United States, he said, just like they did before European settlement.
