Once upon a time, somebody thought it was a good idea to let a whole lot of foxes loose in the Aleutian Islands. “Easier to catch ’em!” reasoned the Russian fur trappers back around 1750. And like in all fairy tales, the uncensored ones where someone ends up eaten, those foxes pretty much wiped out the local geese. By 1938, the Aleutian Goose was pronounced dead.
Until many years later when …(this is where the magic happens) … a biologist rowed his boat out to one of the remotest islands in the Aleutian chain, and there he found, waddling and pecking and reproducing, a small flock of Aleutian geese.
They weren’t extinct! But they were in trouble, so much so that the U.S. Government put them on the Endangered Species List before the Endangered Species Act was even passed. This was 1967.
But now, now there’s thousands of ’em. An Endangered Species Success Story. And each spring they land here to fatten up before taking that long flight over the Pacific and back to their summer home in the Aleutian Islands.
If that isn’t a reason to throw a party, well then, what is?
Join us March 30 – April 2 for the Aleutian Goose Festival! Four days of birding, learning, discerning (and flirting? Who knows…) The organizers have assembled a top-notch website with all the details: www.aleutiangoosefestival.org
Register online or give a call to Sandy (707) 954-5253 or the GooseNest (707) 465-0888.