This article appeared in the April 16, 2003 Cambridge Chronicle

Fighting for the flock

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

The Charles River and its banks are generally regarded as urban cityscape, their natural dimensions subordinate to its biking and jogging paths, picnic areas, boating docks and other manmade acoutrements. But our prized waterway is actually a grand-scale ecosystem with all manner of habitat, flora and fauna. In addition to plantlife and vegetation, many animals call the area home. And within a mile-long swatch of the Charles in Cambridge, on either side of the BU Bridge, a gaggle of approximately 80 white geese, a mixture of Emden and Chinas and two Toulouse, has lived freely since approximately 1980.

However, trouble began in October, 1999, when, according to Friends of the White Geese, a group of concerned Cambridge citizens led by Cambridge activists Robert LaTremouille and Marilyn Wellons, the Metropolitan District Commission’s agent, Boston University, implemented the city of Cambridge’s plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars filling in these wetlands, including those in Magazine Beach, as part of a $1.5 million program in which Cambridge will develop lands owned by the MDC.

“They are set to destroy the balanced ecosystem that was the geese’s nesting area,” said LaTremouille, a Harvard Street resident with a law degree from Boston University and a long history of environmental, landlord-tenant and governmental activism, who reported that all animals save the geese, including a nesting pair of red-tailed hawks, have abandoned the area. “Since 1999, the geese have nested wherever they can in the same general location, using what nesting materials they can find, including garbage,” he said. Human supporters have provided some hay, but it’s catch as catch can for the birds. Last year, one mother goose nested directly at the rail of an active railroad track, taking flight at the train’s passing to save her own life.

This past Monday at the Water Works building at 250 Fresh Pond Parkway, two hearings on the MDC Charles River Master Plan discussed Magazine Beach and the section of Memorial Drive between River Street and Western Avenue. “Cambridge's part involves total removal of dirt at the Magazine Beach fields and replacement of that dirt, at an expense of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said LaTremouille, predicting a mile-long mud flat, from the Memorial Drive split to the MDC pool, that would be the result of an expenditure of hundreds of thousands of Cambridge dollars for removing MDC dirt at Magazine Beach to replace with more dirt, because nine Cambridge City Councilors have objected to wet soil on the riverbank. Large amounts of wetlands and trees, he further explained, may be destroyed or destructively tilled to make way for pedestrian/small vehicle roadways. “They want dry soil on a riverbank and to heck with the environment, the animals living there, and the vegetation,” he said, dryly citing the Cambridge Conservation Commission’s area display lauding the effort. “It is amazing how the people with contempt for the environment turn out almost uniformly to be people who are development professionals, or are controlled or at least influenced by development professionals.”

The MDC's Director of Plans, said LaTremouille, has acknowledged that the agency, which largely relies on volunteer work, has deliberately exposed the nesting geese to predators, human and otherwise. In the 2001 nesting season, he reported, humans beat and stabbed to death nesting mother geese and the leader of the flock, maimed others, and systematically destroyed nests and eggs. In one case, a mother goose’s eggs were broken over her own body. Most newly hatched goslings died after their mothers were killed, he said, but other geese adopted the few that survived the initial exposure.

“In the 2002 nesting season, in addition to human attacks, dogs killed mother geese and ganders,” he said, noting deaths by dog bites as well.

This past Thursday, Friends member “Little Brook” reported finding the dismembered body of a killed Charles River White Goose at the rail bridge. Longtime gaggle leader Bumpy was killed in July 2001; his daughter, Brown Beauty, hatched in 1996 with a brood of 5 in 1999, was training three ganders in that brood for leadership of the gaggle. Two of the three were shot by a pellet gun about a month ago; one died at the New England Wildlife in Hingham where a Friends member had taken him.

The Massachusetts Society for Protection of Animals recently released articles in the Boston Globe’s City Section reporting a "Canada Goose problem." The section featured articles on Easter eggs, instructing people on how to poison the eggs of Canada geese; these methods may have been used against the Charles River White Geese as well.

LaTremouille suggests people thank Governor Romney for his plans to dissolve the MDC, ask him and other political leaders to oppose the MDC's Charles River Master Plan as well as all plans to destroy the mile-long habitat of the Charles River White Geese, and to help to restore the habitat.

“Ask the Cambridge City Council not to destroy the White Geese's habitat at Magazine Beach, the Cambridge-funded part of the Master Plan, this spring,” he added.

Romney’s contact information is GOffice@state.ma.us, 617-725-4000. Senate President Robert Travaglini can be reached at Rtravagl@senate.state.ma.us or 617-722-1500. Cambridge State Representative Paul Demakis is at Rep.PaulDemakis@hou.state.ma.us or 617-722-2460. Citizens can write to all three at the State House, Boston, Mass. 02133.

The Cambridge City Council contact information is c/o City Clerk, City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge 02139; Council@ci.cambridge.ma.us, or 617-349-4280.

For more information, contact Marilyn Wellons, Friends of the White Geese, PAW651@aol.com, or visit www.freemanz.com/guest.