From the description of the bird, this sounds like a terrible idea. If they were successful in restoring populations of these birds to the current environment,

From the description of the bird, this sounds like a terrible idea. If they were successful in restoring populations of these birds to the current environment, wouldn't they immediately resume their role as an agricultural pest? Destroying crops and orchards and fouling vast swathes of the landscape? Not to mention their potential impact on modern life, if you think running into a migration of geese with an aircraft is bad, what about a cloud of similarly sized animals that take over an area for hours to days. They could completely ground all air traffic in and out of a city. Worse yet, what if they decide to take up residence in cities. Mourning doves and rock doves have already done so and are enough of a nuisance, adding their larger cousins to the mix would exacerbate the issue immeasurably. We'd have no choice but to exterminate them all over again.