In the fall the White Geese always feed morning to night on that grass. Now they can’t get to the shore where the grass is.

The White Geese have lived on state parkland on the Charles in Cambridge for 24 years. Thousands of people have cherished them and come to see and feed them in their habitat, centered around Magazine Beach.

The City of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) are building a bicycle path where these people, including families with small children, gather to meet and feed the geese.

The path will be 8 feet wide and, according to construction workers, “stay good and hard” for two lanes of bike and roller-blade traffic. Plans are to finish it in time for the Head of the Charles regatta in late October.

The DCR’s Environmental Notification Form (ENF) mentions a small path, not a two-lane bicycle path. That’s why the Cambridge Conservation Commission has not approved the bike path. Yet it is now under construction.

During construction the geese cannot eat the grass. After construction they and their human friends will be in the path of speeding bikes and roller-bladers.

State Rep. Timothy Toomey praised the new bike/roller-blade path on his CCTV show September 26, 2004. Toomey cochairs the State Legislature’s Joint Public Safety Committee with another Cambridge resident, Senator Jarrett Barrios

In the meantime Friends of the White Geese have organized their own little Berlin airlift to feed the geese daily as best they can, with greens donated by produce suppliers and left-over bread.

Friends of the White Geese tel.: 617-354-3858, cell: 617-792-7738 e-mail: onblueriver@yahoo.com