They may be beloved here, but they are reviled in other countries

Nancy J. White, STAFF REPORTER

The sneak attack was launched from a fleet of boats. Kayaks, to be exact.

In the marshes of Queens, N.Y., the assault squad nabbed their honking targets, herding them into crates then loading them onto a truck, which took off to a secret location – to gas the gaggle of Canada geese.

In the U.S., Canada geese have gone from nasty nuisance to avian terrorist. Forensic evidence – smashed feathers and gooey bits – nailed them as the culprits that forced a US Airways plane to ditch in the Hudson River in January.

Now New York City is waging war, already killing several hundred of the squawkers as security risks and aiming for a total of 2,000 over the next few weeks.

"The plane incident was catastrophic, but very rare," says Sharon Pawlak, national coordinator of the U.S. group, Coalition to Prevent the Destruction of Canada Geese.

She lets out an audible sigh. "It's been a PR disaster for the geese." And it's not just featherheads causing a stir. Creatures from Canada are having a run of bad press. Consider the beaver, Canada's bucktoothed national symbol.

In towns outside Boston, including Concord and Lexington, citizens are up in arms. Water from beaver dams has swelled septic tanks and town sewers, turned backyards into swamps, cut off access to an emergency road, threatened a town's drinking wells, and flooded a charity golf tournament.

One homeowner claims a beaver ate his dock. Locals are increasingly choosing not to leave it to beavers to do their thing. One town earmarked $5,000 in this year's budget just for battling the hard-working rodents.

Once fairly rare, the beaver has bounced back thanks to years of conservation efforts.

In Scotland, eleven of the flat-tailed animals, extinct in Britain for 400 years, were released into the wild last month. But a coalition of farmers, landowners and anglers are voicing strong anti-beaver views, worried about damaged trees, flooded property and depleted fish stocks. In an interview with the Telegraph, a local clan chief referred to them as "destructive nocturnal rats."

For full article, click here.