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SALT LAKE CITY — The starting date for the light goose hunt in Millard County has been changed because it will overlap with the Delta Snow Goose Festival.
The light goose hunt was scheduled to start Saturday, but the annual Snow Goose Festival held in Delta will run Friday and Saturday. The Snow Goose Festival is held each year on the last Friday and Saturday of February, which happens to coincide with the beginning of the 2015 hunt, according to a Division of Wildlife Resources news release.
As a result, DWR officials postponed the start of the hunt to March 2. The light goose hunt will now run March 2 to March 10 in Millard County, but it will run from Feb. 28 to March 10 in the rest of the Utah general goose areas.
In February and March, as many as 20,000 light geese stop near Delta to recuperate as they migrate to the Arctic Circle, the news release said. The annual Delta Snow Goose Festival, hosted by the Delta Area Chamber of Commerce and DWR, includes a wildlife-watching event and other outdoors activities.
The light goose hunt was approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because the large concentration of migrating geese cause “considerable damage to the habitat of their nesting grounds,” the news release said. The hunt reduces the number of geese in these critical areas. However, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act does not allow spring goose hunts to run past March 10.
Watch KSL.com Saturday for a photo gallery of the Delta Snow Goose Festival.
