Public Viewpoint: Those Darn Birds

Monday, August 18, 2014

The editorial “Goose’s gain causes human headaches” (July 25) had ominous lines: “These aren’t inconsequential concerns.” It was about the threat of the Canada geese and those who enjoy a few minutes with the grandkids going to a local lake or pond to feed them day-old bread. This form of the Canada goose is returning from near extinction after a long and difficult effort (to support) recovery by Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and conservation organizations. They inconvenience those who have turned Northwest Arkansas’s grasslands into golf courses and subdivisions with pictureperfect ponds. Water quality experts always say fecal material is a problem in managing water quality.

I kept thinking the editorial would finish with geese and get on to the Poultry Capitol of the Universe. What superfast-growing, white bird is produced in the hundreds of millions here every year? What fecal matter is deliberately spread in the millions of tons on hundreds of thousands of acres of our watersheds, all flowing to our drinking water? What hog production facility in the watershed of the Buffalo National River is spreading millions of gallons of untreated hog waste on Ozark farmland? Who in Northwest Arkansas lives in a home connected, not to a wastewater treatment plant, but to a septic tank that eventually flows to the watershed?

But of course, we take it all for granted. Reminds me of Willie Nelson’s “Mama don’t let your babies…” Instead, “Grandma, don’t your grandkids grow up to feed the geese.”

JOSEPH C. NEAL

Fayetteville