Each year fish & wildlife agencies around the country assemble teams of biologists, technicians, and volunteers to take on the important conservation work of banding waterfowl. Unlike winter waterfowl banding, where efforts focus primarily on migratory ducks on their winter range, summer banding is focused on Canada geese in the areas where they raise young and go through the annual cycle of molting. In 2024, New England BHA’s RI team assisted wildlife biologists from the RI Department of Environmental Management’s Fish & Wildlife Division with their annual resident Canada goose banding efforts, which are led by DEM F&W’s Principal Waterfowl Biologist Jenny Kilburn.

Banding waterfowl is a conservation tool that informs wildlife biologists who track trends in population, migratory routes, survival and reproduction. Hunters play an important role in gathering data by reporting banded waterfowl taken during the hunting season to the United States Geological Survey’s Bird Banding Laboratory. Based on the information gathered each year, North America’s Flyway Councils advise State agencies on how they should set seasons and bag limits to ensure populations are conserved based on the best available science. Data gathered through population monitoring efforts, like banding, reveal that RI’s resident geese are overabundant, so RI opens “early” and “late” seasons with enhanced bag limits at times and in areas where migratory geese are not likely to be found as a means to manage the resident population. 

The short window of time while adult geese are molting their flight feathers, and before goslings have developed the ability to fly, provides a perfect opportunity for summer banding work to take place. Flocks found on land are corralled using netted panels that come together to form a pen, and geese on the water are rounded up and “pushed” by kayakers into a pen that is has been set up for them on the shoreline. Flightless geese can be surprisingly evasive even though they’re without their primary means of escape, and it takes quite a bit of teamwork and coordinated effort for the roundup to go smoothly, or at all.

Once geese have been penned the team can begin the work of recording data and banding. Some volunteers are tasked with going into the pen and “wrangling” geese, which involves catching each individual and handing it off to be sexed, banded and released after the data has been recorded. Goslings always go first and are released together, which ensures that they’re not injured by the larger, more powerful adults during the process. While geese don’t necessarily enjoy the process of being rounded up and banded, the entire exercise is designed to minimize stress on them, and after being released they quickly go back to their daily routine, with he only lasting effects being their new jewelry and the conservation data that it provides our fish & wildlife managers.

“Backcountry Hunters & Anglers is committed to ensuring North America’s wildlife is managed based on the best available science and data, and when there are opportunities for our members to get their hands dirty we enthusiastically show up to answer the call” said New England Chapter Board Chair Michael Woods. “Supporting DEM F&W’s summer waterfowl banding efforts, which subsequently inform the seasons and bag limits that Rhode Island goose hunters enjoy each fall and winter, is a prime example of how BHA members are advancing our North American mission in the Ocean state.