Expert says similar incidents likely happen often, but ‘the difference in this case is that person was caught’
A Winnipeg woman has been fined $300 for throwing things at a Canada goose that got in her way as she tried to get into her friend’s apartment building.
The birds are protected by federal law, which makes harassing them an offence.
The woman, now 20, pleaded guilty under federal legislation known as the Migratory Birds Convention Act, after being caught on camera throwing a bottle of leather cleaner and a pylon at the goose to chase it off its nest.
“I was just … trying to scare it away,” the woman told provincial court Judge Kelly Moar in a Winnipeg courtroom last month.
“So you agree that that’s what ultimately happened that day? You understand that they are protected birds or you now know that?” Moar asked the woman.
“Now I know,” she said, her mom sitting beside her.
It’s a case one expert says offers a window into the world of Canadian wildlife laws. Though it’s “fairly rare” for charges to be laid under the act, animal lawyer and educator V. Victoria Shroff said she thinks similar incidents between people and animals happen often, but typically go undetected.
“The difference in this case is that person was caught,” said Shroff, who works at Shroff Animal Law in Vancouver and teaches at the University of British Columbia’s Peter A. Allard School of Law.
“It’s just a fluke that some passerby happened to have witnessed it and videotaped it…. People need to watch out. Everybody’s got a camera in their phone now, and people are watching.”
Didn’t know it’s illegal? ‘Doesn’t matter,’ lawyer says
The investigation into the Winnipeg case started when an environment officer got a call on May 8, 2024, about a woman harassing a nesting goose a day earlier near a Henderson Highway apartment building, court heard last month.
The officer checked the information of the vehicle that was at the scene and contacted the owner, who said his daughter was driving that day. The daughter admitted to authorities to harassing the goose, but said she wasn’t in the right headspace because she’d recently learned she was pregnant.
While the ticket listed a penalty of $730, a judge agreed to lower the amount.
More at
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-goose-fine-migratory-birds-act-1.7600025
