DAVID B. WILLIAMS APR 13, 2023
Thanks to Mary M.
Ed Note: David Williams is the son of one of our residents — Jackie!
The 1960s was time of change in Seattle. For most of the decade no Canada geese called our waterways home. But in April 1968, the story of the big black and gray birds began to be rewritten. Early in the morning on April 11, 25 men from the Washington state Department of Game and the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife gathered at a small island. They were 17 miles up the Columbia River from the nearly complete John Day Dam. Their plan, code named Operation Mother Goose, was simple: crews would powerboat out and collect eggs from islands soon to be flooded by Lake Umatilla.
After the state men collected enough eggs, which they placed in goose down-lined boxes, a helicopter took the bounty to the Kennewick Game Farm, a facility established to raise game birds for hunting. Biologists then determined the stage of embryo development and placed them into incubators.
About 1,000 of the 1,200 eggs collected at the islands over two days, hatched over the next 32 days. Most of the young geese survived at the game farm, although nearly a 100 suffocated under other goslings. Within four weeks, each rapidly growing goose was eating more than a pound of feed each day.
Operation Mother Goose was so named because biologists hoped the goslings could learn from and join wild flocks of geese and soon become fully fledged members of goose society. Workers released the first geese into the wild at McNary Refuge and McNary Game Farm at the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers. Total distribution numbered 900 geese, mostly to state properties near the Columbia, but Mother Goose also delivered her young to Arizona Fish and Game, Idaho Fish and Game, and the city of Spokane.