The obvious flaw in these guidelines is the unsubstantiated assumption that the targeted populations utilize the same habitats year after year and that the Department knows what those habitats are, where they are located and what contaminants are present, and it assumes that no geese from other areas with different contaminant exposures move in to occupy vacancies created in those habitats by the Department's urban Canada goose control program. The Department's Guidelines, however, are based on the erroneous premise that urban Canada geese occur only in static populations that consistently utilize rigidly defined local habitats with known contaminant loads so that their exposure to toxicants can be accurately determined by sampling at one point in time. Wildlife Health will delay or deny gosling translocation efforts if it is determined a contagious disease is present in the original goose flock which will have severe health impacts on waterfowl in recipient wetlands. Unfortunately, the Department's Guidelines for Health Testing of Urban Goose Gosling Relocation suffer from two fundamental deficiencies which render the proposed testing clearly perfunctory and virtually worthless. Virtually all wild waterfowl are exposed to and infected with a variety of endoparasites.
Most parasites identified from wild birds cause no clinical disease.
Therefore, the demonstration of evidence of parasites in fecal samples collected randomly from environments occupied by urban Canada geese in the absence of clinical disease resulting from parasitism is of virtually no epizootiologic significance or value. It is instructive to note in this context that waterfowl infected with either of these diseases cannot reliably be detected with serologic techniques, and identification requires more involved procedures to isolate the causative agents. Conclusions The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' April 2000 Guidelines for Contaminants Screening of Harvested Urban Geese will not provide reliable information on the types and levels of contaminants in urban Canada geese processed into human food products for donation to food pantries and, therefore, will not permit an objective evaluation of whether the contaminant levels meet safe human consumption levels. Because the proposed health testing program considers only contagious diseases in urban Canada geese scheduled for translocation but not in the waterfowl on the recipient wetlands, and because all of the diseases listed already are present in migratory waterfowl where they do not cause significant disease problems, the proposed health testing program will provide no useful or relevant information. A review of issues and information related to Fish and Wildlife Service policies and practices.