Living with Canada Geese

Scarsdale residents may remember the controversy surrounding Canada geese at the Library Pond this past winter. Our village had contracted with the USDA Wildlife Services to round up the geese during the summer molting season (when they could not fly) and kill them by placing them in gas chambers. This, we were told, would “take care” of the goose issue for approximately $5,000. 

Advocates argued that there were other ways to handle this issue that were both more effective and more compassionate. We stated the obvious: geese fly, so if you kill one flock another will fly in. We argued that an area as small as the library pond could be cleaned of the droppings, similar to the way litter is routinely cleaned from all public spaces. We also argued that a machine, known as the Nature Sweep, could be purchased to remove droppings and turn them into fertilizer. We presented the option of birth control (annual egg-oiling). The general public sentiment was one of distaste for a slaughter, feeling that an intelligent community like Scarsdale could certainly find a humane way to handle this issue. In fact, in a testament to the higher ethical values that we have imparted to our children, hundreds of signatures were collected from students at the middle school and high school asking for a nonviolent resolution to this issue.

Further, the village Board of Trustees and Mayor were made aware that the USDA Wildlife Services is a highly controversial agency being investigated by two US Congressmen. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tom Knudson has written a three part investigative report published in The Sacramento Bee detailing pervasive cruelty. Fox News has published its own expose. And most recently, the editorial board of The New York Times has spoken out against the USDA Wildlife Services in their editorial “Agriculture’s Misnamed Agency.” 

Our officials wisely chose to cancel the contract with the USDA, and pursue nonlethal means. The thought of jamming sentient creatures into gas chambers, letting them gasp for air, and thump against the tanks until they died, somehow did not seem in line with the values of a civilized community. They oiled goose eggs to prevent any new goslings from hatching. They also hired a company called Geesebusters, who used an eagle kite to scare away the geese. 

However, not every community heeded the obvious: “if you kill geese, more will simply fly into the area.” The summer of 2013 was a bad summer for geese in areas outside of Westchester County. 

Molting season---the month and a half long flightless period where the geese regrow flight feathers---is over.  Many communities including the Jamaica Bay Wildlife “Refuge,” Van Cortlandt Park, Inwood Park, and Cornwall, NY, to name a few, hired the USDA to kill their geese.  And now, just weeks after these communities spent thousands of dollars to have wildlife slaughtered, guess what? At every one of these locations, residents are photographing dozens of new geese flying in and taking up residence. Exactly as advocates had warned. All that money, all that suffering, and all that community discord, for a few weeks without geese. That hardly seems like much of a “plan,” unless you are the USDA who sells these lucrative killing contracts year after year.

Canada geese are here to stay. They are very well-adapted to our suburban lifestyles of lush green lawns and bodies of water. They survive amidst all of our noise, traffic, and pollution. The so-called “resident geese” are unable to migrate because they are descended from the flocks that were used as hunting decoys many decades ago, and did not learn migratory behavior. Their ancestors were used to repopulate Canada geese around the country after they were nearly hunted to extinction. 

This bloody summer of New York goose slaughters is now followed by the inevitable repopulation, pointing the finger clearly in the direction of long-term, non-lethal management. Indeed, any concerns over population numbers can be addressed through yearly egg-oiling (birth control). “Hazing” can chase the geese out of certain areas. And the simple act of cleaning up droppings could allow for both geese and people to coexist. 

Since I enjoy geese around a body of water, I took the above picture at the lake near New Rochelle High School, where a large flock of geese coexists with people and other wildlife.