Annual Canadian geese-banding begins Thursday at Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Resources headquarters
Republished from WEKU.
Kentucky’s Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources will begin the annual Canadian geese banding Thursday in Frankfort, in their own backyard. John Brunjes is the migratory bird program coordinator in the department’s Wildlife Division. He said Canadian geese are flightless this time of year, and they’ll band between 100 and 200 of them at their headquarters’ two lakes.
“Hopefully, we get them out of the water. We can catch them out of the water before they get into the water, but if not, we’ll use kayaks to push them out of the water, and we herd them on shore, up into a corral.”
The bands include the age and sex of the geese. Brunjes said across the state, they band between a thousand and 1,500 of the large birds annually.
“They are hunted in the state, and so we have an obligation to know what are the impacts of hunting on this species. And so we put bands on them, and we use those bands to determine what the harvest rates of birds are here, these Canada geese.”
Brunjes said more than 90 percent of hunters contact Fish and Wildlife to pass along information on the bands. He said the Canadian geese population is about 40,000 in Kentucky, and increasing slightly.
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Originally published by WEKU.
Republished with permission.
