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Alberta plans to declare its first spring snow goose hunt this year in an attempt to help deal with a species that has grown so numerous that it is destroying its own habitat.

“They’ve been overabundant for the last 15 years,” Duncan MacDonnell of Alberta Environment says. “They’re causing damage to their home range in the Arctic.”

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Over the past 20 years, improved farming methods have resulted in better food supply along the big, white birds’ migration routes, says a report on Environment Canada’s website.

Snow geese tend to nest in large colonies of thousands of individuals, which can overgraze the delicate Arctic tundra they scour for grasses and sedges.

“Grazing and grubbing by geese not only permanently removes vegetation, but also changes soil salinity, nitrogen dynamics and moisture levels,” says Environment Canada. “The result is the alteration or elimination of the plant communities, which in all likelihood will not be restored.”