Researchers, hunter track same goose — but hunter gets him first

A light-bellied Brent goose that was part of a migratory tracking project by Britain’s Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and the National Geographic Society was shot by a hunter on Bathurst Island last month.

Scientists had been tracking the goose, named Kerry, by satellite for four months as he migrated about 5,000 kilometres from Northern Ireland to the Arctic.

When beeps from the transmitter he had been fitted with stopped abruptly, the British scientists enlisted the help of Canadian wildlife officers.

The signal brought them to Little Cornwallis Island, and eventually to Resolute Bay, where the beeping became louder and louder.

The researchers knocked on a door in the community and a man admitted to shooting the bird on a hunting trip to Bathurst Island a few weeks earlier. Kerry was still in the hunter’s freezer with his transmitter on.

“We now have evidence that these geese are hunted for food in Canada,” Dr. James Robinson, a senior research officer with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in England told the National Post, The information helps explain part of the threat to the population.