Birds|Korkeasaari released dozens of white-cheeked geese in the 1980s. After that, the sport became established in Helsinki.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
In the 1980s, Korkeasaari released domesticated white-cheeked geese into the wild.
However, the birds returned to Korkeasaari in the company of their arctic species. They were allowed to stay in their places of birth.
The white-fronted goose population grew explosively since the 1990s, and there are now 27,600 birds in Finland.
The government wants to enable the hunting of white-cheeked geese, but the EU’s bird directive makes it difficult to do so.
Today White-cheeked geese are a familiar sight in Helsinki’s street scene, but it hasn’t always been that way.
Korkeasaari Zoo may have its spoon in the soup.
At the end of the 1980s, the zoo had a problem: the white-cheeked geese kept on the island had produced so many chicks that the space started to run out.
Korkeasaari’s then manager Ilkka Koivisto developed a plan. A doctor would inspect and ring the birds for identification. During the fall migration, they would be released.
“The intention was that the wild population would drag the farmed population with them to their habitat,” says Korkeasaari’s former long-time chief guide Pertti Pöllänen.
According to Pöllänen, about twenty white-cheeked geese were taken to a field near Porvoo and released to the arctic birds’ journey.
“It was a job ordered by the supervisor and I did the job that the supervisor said,” he says about releasing the birds.
Although it’s hard to imagine nowadays, the white-cheeked goose was a rare success for bird watchers in Finland at the time.
In the spring, thousands of birds flew over Finland to the Novaya Zemlya island group in the Barents Sea, and in the fall back to the Netherlands to spend the winter. The population had followed its age-old route since the ice age.
Everything seemed to go as planned during the winter.
The truth dawned the following spring, when Korkeasaari received surprising visitors.
Ringed birds started to drop back to the island and even faster than their species.
“It turned out that they didn’t leave with the wild population, but traveled back to their birthplaces,” says Pöllänen.
White-fronted geese in Helsinki.
He believes that birds are drawn back by both genes and environment.
“Animals learn to go after easy food. It’s a shorter journey to Helsinki than to the arctic regions to compete for food.”
The birds were allowed to stay and graze in their birthplaces. In the years 1987–1990, a total of six adult white-cheeked geese and 46 chicks were released from Korkeasaari.
The chicks of a wild couple that had arrived from elsewhere and nested among the birds housed in Korkeasaari were also released.
Pöllänen has heard many comments about the Korkeasaari solution. He is convinced that the act left a mark in history.
“The urban bird population started to spread from those domesticated individuals. This is the truth.”
The white-fronted geese and the public try their best to live together in Korkeasaari even today.
Eventually it is of course difficult to say how much Korkeasaari’s actions really affected the spread of white-cheeked geese. The barnyard birds may have given the Helsingin stock the initial impetus, but the rapid growth cannot be explained by their descendants alone.
Spokesperson for Birdlife Jan Södersved says, for example, that even in Gotland, the population grew explosively after the Baltic Sea’s first couple settled there in 1971.
“Of course, it could have affected the schedule of the spread if, according to a single pair, there have been birds released from the shelter. The effect has hardly been very big”, Södersved reflects.
“It’s hard to say how the species would have spread otherwise, but what’s certain is that it’s here to stay,” reflects Pertti Pöllänen again.
In 1970, 30,000 white-cheeked geese wintered throughout Europe, but by the end of the 1980s the number had already increased to 200,000. Now there are about 27,600 birds in Finland and already one and a half million in Europe.
White-cheeked goose causes harm to agriculture by feeding on fields. In the city, it may protect its young aggressively.
The species is currently protected and under special protection in the EU Birds Directive. According to Birdlife, no member state can designate it as a game species.
Still, the Finnish government established a working group in May, which is preparing measures to define geese as a game species.
According to Södersved, the stock would withstand it well, but large-scale hunting without special permits would require the opening of the EU’s bird directive.
“There is hardly a great desire for it. Many current game species would have to be transferred to the protected group due to the sharp decline in the population. As long as the directive is not violated, there is no need to make changes,” says Södersved.
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