Geese, predators, and the river
A case study in interwoven agriculture and property ownership
More than once, 20th century conservationist Aldo Leopold expressed his disapproval of the separation of natural areas from farmland. He asked, “Doesn’t conservation imply a certain interspersion of land uses, a certain pepper-and-salt pattern in the warp and woof of the land use fabric?” In my own farming and gardening adventures, I’ve tried to be attentive to this interweaving in both physical and moral senses, and this is a small-scale story from my own experience in raising geese. (And, as it happened, what I struggled to figure out with my geese also shaped my work as a green political theorist and teacher.)
A pair of geese on my farm (personal photo)
Raising geese along the river
For about 15 years, I raised domestic geese for their meat, eggs and as continued breeding stock. My farm was on the bank of a small river in central Minnesota and the nearest neighbors were no closer than a half-mile. With this degree of seclusion, I managed little my flock of half a dozen geese with no fences or pens. During spring, summer, and fall, the geese had easy access to grain in the barnyard and grazed where they wished around the farm and on the riverbank, sometimes disappearing up- or down-river for several hours at a time or overnight. In addition to grain — more important as a way to keep the flock psychologically attached to me and to the barnyard than as a source of nutrition — I gave them nesting sites and occasional garden waste. In general, the flock spent its nights on the river or at its bank. In accordance with centuries-old traditions of free-roaming farm geese, I confined the flock to the barn only during really rough winter weather and on the day right before butchering.
So far, this may seem like a story of geese allowed to satisfy their own interests until butchering day and an “owner” who exerted little control. The story is not so simple, however. First, it’s relevant that I kept the geese as part of my family’s food supply. Each fall I would choose one or two geese for butchering, which clearly poses a split between my interests and those of the individual geese. A second — and for me more problematic — part of the story involves predators. Adult geese and their goslings periodically disappeared, often with evidence that they had been killed by foxes, coyotes, hawks, bald eagles, or a neighbor’s dog. Most of the deaths and disappearances occurred at night and along the riverbank.
For several years I tolerated the losses, but with considerable regret and annoyance. I didn’t recognize the theoretical implications at first, but I gradually realized that I was wrestling with conflicts between the interests of multiple individuals, several species and my local ecosystem. If I did nothing, my economic and food interests would be harmed, as well as the interests of the geese who ended up as prey, while the predators’ interests (as individuals and as species) would benefit. If I limited or eliminated the geese’s access to the river, their interests as waterfowl who flourish in a riverbank setting would be harmed but their interest in reduced risk from predation would benefit. If I penned them in, my interest in raising more geese to butchering age would benefit, but my interest in managing my flock in a way that was nearly cost- and maintenance-free would suffer, as would the interests of the predators.
Some neighbors thought my practice of leaving the flock unfenced was foolish, for I was clearly losing my financial investment, low as it might be. I also began to be concerned about competition between my domestic geese and the wild Canada geese that spent much of the year in the river. Were my domestic geese upsetting the local ecosystem or were they an interwoven part of nature? I wasn’t sure. In the end, though, I knew I had to make a decision because predators took so many geese that I had no goslings left from that year’s hatch and no adults to spare for Thanksgiving dinner. The current setup wasn’t sustainable, but what was I to do?
After several weeks of uncertainty, I settled on a compromise of sorts, moving the geese into a fenced pasture connected to a pen in the barn. Each morning I opened the gate to the pen and let them into the pasture. When the weather was tolerable, I opened the pasture gate as well and let them roam and, as I’d hoped, they soon learned to come back regularly for the grain and garden scraps. Each evening I rounded them up with the aid of my dog and herded them back into the pasture and then into the pen, locking them up tight during the night. Clearly, I undermined the geese’s strong desire to spend nights on the river and roam without restrictions, but significantly fewer of them died (including from both predation and butchering). At the same time, management of the flock became more time-consuming and I had to be ready to act within a small window of time as dusk fell each evening. If the dog and I were even 10 minutes too late, the geese already had headed to the river for the night and could not be herded back to the safety of the barn. More than once, when this occurred, fewer geese returned to the barn the next morning.
The barn (personal photo)
Lessons learned: Weighted interests and universal moral standing
I do not tell this story as a portrayal of success — on the contrary, the geese, predators and I continued to battle for our conflicting interests and I still was on the losing end at times. Instead, I share this as a case study of trying to figure out how to interweave the individual and species interests of geese and their predators, as well as my family’s food supply and the local ecosystem, in a particular place and time. I believed that my ownership of the geese and land should take place within a system of weighted interests (interests can be basic, serious, or peripheral) within a shared universe of moral standing, which requires a holistic understanding that extends moral stature to all human and nonhuman life and demands recognition of species and ecosystems as entities with moral standing of their own. In other words, I needed to weigh the interests of my family, the interests of the individual geese and the attributes and desires that constitute the “gooseness” of their species, the interests of individual predators and their species, and the interests of my local riparian ecosystem. All of them matter.
What did my goose-raising teach me? My experiences and considerations led me to the following conclusions about the use of property in the forms of land and livestock:
The land and the geese raised on that land are my property and I am in a distinctive position of power. However, my management of that property must be based on common membership in the local ecosystem and dedicated to the recognition of all interests. The geese are not interchangeable commodities but individual entities with their own interests and moral standing.
Allowing the geese to roam and have access to the river recognizes and respects their physiological and behavioral relationship to the water, which constitutes a serious interest for individual geese and their species.
The geese should be allowed access to the river only if the non-domesticated inhabitants (including plants, animals and the riverbed structure) are not significantly harmed, thus preserving the basic or serious interest (depending on the degree of harm) of the ecosystem. If protection of the ecosystem requires fencing of the domestic geese, their serious interest as waterfowl should be respected in the design and management of their pasture.
We must confine the territories of domestic dogs because of their damage to basic interests of individuals, species and the ecosystem. As carnivores, dogs have a serious interest in obtaining meat; however, domestic dogs kill primarily for sport rather than food, and their peripheral interest in livestock predation cannot be tolerated when it violates the geese’s basic interests and my serious interests in supplying food to my family.
Foxes, coyotes, hawks, and bald eagles are integral parts of the local ecosystem and their basic interests as individuals and species require killing for food. Their existence as predators also serves the basic or serious interests of the ecosystem, which benefits from the presence of both predators and prey, and the basic or serious interests of the prey species that would be harmed by overpopulation.
Humans also are part of the ecosystem, and while some may choose to be vegetarians, during those years I had a serious interest in raising and butchering. However, I also have an ethical responsibility to avoid waste (e.g., by using goose down and feathers).
I am justified in limiting (but not ending) the geese’s access to the river as a way to reduce (but not eliminate) predation. Despite my best efforts, occasional instances of predation will occur. When this happens, predation should be tolerated and, when caused by non-domestic animals, respected, for the ecosystem of which my property is a part is more important than either the property or my ownership rights.
My experience and conclusions took place in a particular setting of knowledge and familiarity, but it seems to me that these points broadly apply as an overall guideline for decision-making about a property owner’s relationship with the livestock and local ecosystem of a farm.