By GRAHAM BROOKS / Staff Writer

Helena resident and journalist Mary Lou Simms has a passion for wildlife, and that passion has led to the start of her new blog featured on The Huffington Post.

Simms’ background includes work investigating the USDA’s Wildlife Services and its mismanagement of the nation’s resident Canada geese populations as well as being the features and design editor of The Boca Raton News, according to her biography information on The Huffington Post.

Simms currently has two wildlife blog post entries on The Huffington Post and one of those titled “Annual Summer Molt: ‘Hard on the Geese’” speaks of the annual summer goose molt, when the resident Canada geese cannot fly until their new wing feathers grow in.

In the blog post entry, Simms discuses how the approximately 200 geese descended upon Helena’s Tucker Lake and the reunion she gets to experience with many familiar geese.

Simms also said she sees the molt as more of an ordeal because of the burden and strains the geese are put under as well as the constant worry she has for them.

“Unfortunately, the geese also have something else to fear during the molt. The feds. This is when the USDA’s Wildlife Services goes into communities like mine and captures unsuspecting geese like Crip,” reads a portion of her blog.

Later in the entry, Simms recaps some of the highlights of the summer molt in Helena and how she is relieved that she has almost survived another molt.

Simms’ wildlife blog and her entries can be found at Huffingtonpost.com/mary-lou-simms/.

In addition to her blog, Simms is currently working on a book titled “Almost human… the hidden lives of geese.”