Drama in an Untamed Ecosystem - Alaska's Copper River Delta - includes related article on federal and state regulations

National Wildlife, April-May, 1999 by Sharon Begley

As it is, farmers greet the annual influx of 200,000 to 300,000 Canada geese with all the welcome they would a plague of locusts. The geese, arriving in clouds that darken the skies, descend on farms in the Willamette Valley, mowing the fields to bare earth. They gobble so much green browse, especially rye grass, that they cost individual farmers in excess of $100,000 in losses, reports Trost. If the dusky's numbers fall below 8,000, suggest some biologists, managers might have to consider making it illegal to hunt any Canada goose so not a single dusky is shot accidentally. At that, farmers along the Pacific Flyway might revolt.

So far, the government has been studying the situation. The Fish and Wildlife Service, through projects like Anthony and Grand's, is learning what preys on duskies and their young. If it turns out that one particular predator species is chowing down on most of the dusky eggs, the state or feds could propose more hunting. If, as the camera traps suggest, the chief predator is the bald eagle, most people involved want to be safely retired when the time comes to decide what to do. (Feared headline: "U.S. Biologists Propose Eagle Hunting to Save Pest Goose.")

The Forest Service is analyzing how the duskies differ from other Canada geese. On this front, the answer isn't one that dusky partisans hoped to hear: The dusky does not seem to differ genetically from the Vancouver Canada goose, a western Canada subspecies, says Eldridge. And that calls into question whether the dusky deserves protection as a distinct subspecies after all.

Meanwhile, the Copper River Delta isn't finished with its metamorphosis. "Pretty soon you'll have a spruce forest here," says the Forest Service's Logan. "And then, after maybe 100 years, the whole thing will reverse because the ground will start subsiding."

The quake of 1964 wasn't the first time the earth moved up here. Temblors have hit nine times in 5,600 years, calculates geologist George Plafker of the U.S. Geological Survey. Each rise allowed trees and brush to obliterate the duskies' habitat. Eventually--the whole cycle takes 700 to 800 years--the delta settled back to sea level, water percolated in and dusky habitat returned. Presumably, these yo-yo tectonics will all recur.

Will the dusky make it through the current cycle? "This is one of the truly interesting, and thorny, philosophical questions for twenty- first-century wildlife management," says Russ Oates. "How much effort should we expend to preserve a subspecies that, through no fault of mankind, is in trouble? My prediction is that, when the answer comes, the wildlife is going to lose."

Sharon Begley is Newsweek's science editor.

Will This Wilderness Stay Wild?

Any pieces of paper protect the Copper River Delta. One designates it a State Critical Wildlife Habitat Area; another makes it a Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network Site. A third, from Congress, is a unique mandate that its U.S. Forest Service lands, which comprise much of the delta, be managed primarily for the conservation of fish and wildlife and their habitat.