Starting on April 11, 1968, biologists collect more than 1,200 Canada goose eggs along the Columbia River behind the nearly complete John Day Dam, located 28 miles east of The Dalles, Oregon, and about 20 miles south of Goldendale. The biologists’ goal is to use the eggs to repopulate drastically dwindled populations of the bird. Most of the geese survive and by June, the birds will be distributed throughout the state, including possibly into Puget Sound. These birds may be the source populations for the thousands of Canada geese that will live year round in urban habitats west of the Cascade Mountains.
Although modern citizens in the Puget Sound may find it hard to believe, Canada geese originally did not inhabit this area. Furthermore, overhunting, unrestricted harvesting of eggs, and habitat loss in the late 1800s and early 1900s had driven down goose populations throughout the country. In the 1960s, however, biologists began to reintroduce the birds back to their former habitats and to place them in new habitats. This frenzy manifested itself in the Northwest through a project called Operation Mother Goose.
Operation Mother Goose began on April 11, 1968, 17 miles up the Columbia River from the nearly complete John Day Dam. Early in the morning approximately 25 men from the Washington state Department of Game and the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife gathered at a small island. From this base of operations, crews spread out in powerboats to collect eggs from nests on 25 to 30 islands in the 70 miles of river that would be flooded less than a week later.
Once an egg was collected, it was placed in a cardboard box insulated with goose down from the nests. When enough eggs accumulated, the boxes were lashed onto a rack on the outside of a helicopter and whisked 50 miles northeast to the Kennewick Game Farm, one of several facilities across the state that raised game birds such as pheasants for hunting. Biologists immediately unpacked their cargo, shined a light into each egg to determine the stage of development of the embryo, and placed it into one of three incubators. The entire process took about two hours from collection to safe keeping.