Fowl Play Growing Bird Population Leaving Big Mess In Its Wake

On the West Side, the goose is cooked.

East of the Cascades, it’s just starting to brown.

Fed up with Canada geese that defecate in parks and sometimes chase kids, the King County Parks and Recreation Department plans to gas 3,500 of the birds this summer. The butchered carcasses will be distributed to charities.

That will leave an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 geese in the Puget Sound region, where the species was rare just 20 years ago.

Some park managers and wildlife experts believe it’s just a matter of time before they have to take aggressive steps to control urban geese in Eastern Washington and North Idaho. While no one has a regionwide count of the critters, their numbers are increasing.

“Six, seven years ago, we only had about seven geese on the property,” said Mike Barber, superintendent of Spokane County’s Hangman Valley Golf Course. “If I went out and counted now, I’d probably see 100.”

The twin communities of Lewiston, Idaho, and Clarkston, Wash., are home to about 2,000 geese, said Cal Groen, regional supervisor for the Idaho Department of Fish and Wildlife. The flock is expanding, despite a limited urban hunt designed to eliminate a few geese and teach the rest a lesson.

“They’ve kind of grown accustomed to making a very easy living,” said Groen. “They graze in people’s yards and the parks.”

Unlike their rural brethren, urban geese rarely migrate. Lawns near water create a perfect habitat, and urban areas typically are bereft of predators.

A good deal for geese becomes a great deal when humans can’t resist the urge to give handouts of bread and other food. That often makes the geese lose their fear of people and become pushy.

“In one case, I … actually had to take a swing at a goose that was being aggressive toward a child and his parent,” said Jim Harris, Eastern Washington director for the state Parks and Recreation Commission.

Each mature goose creates about three pounds of waste a day, dropped on lawns and in swimming areas where people like to play.

Visitors frequently complain that there’s nowhere to lay a beach blanket at places like Sun Lakes State Park in Washington. Health officials worry about bacteria and parasites that can thrive on the feces.

“We believe that’s behind the swimmers’ itch problem that we have off and on,” said Mike Sternback, Sun Lakes ranger.

Parks officials and golf superintendents say that if things get much worse, they will have to control the geese somehow. That could include using dogs trained to chase the birds, spraying lawns with foul-tasting substances or addling eggs.

But those methods didn’t work in the Puget Sound region and aren’t practical everywhere. Lawn sprays, for instance, are costly and tend to rinse away the first time the lawn is hit by rain or sprinklers, said Harris.

“In a park where you’re telling people they have to keep dogs under control, it sends a mixed message to have a dog running around, chasing geese,” he said.

Puget Sound’s goose problem was a gift from Eastern Washington. Wildlife workers rounded up eggs and goslings from along the Columbia and Snake rivers as water was rising behind newly constructed dams in the 1960s and ‘70s. The birds were transplanted to the Seattle area, where Canada geese previously were rare.

The gift was returned as the goose population grew and West Siders began to complain. Between 1989 and 1994, the U.S. Department of Agriculture shipped 7,342 Puget Sound geese back to the Snake and Columbia.

The geese didn’t take to the wild, reports the Washington Department of Wildlife. Some winged back to Seattle. Others settled in places like Richland and Lewiston.

The hunts in Lewiston and Clarkston started two years ago, when officials from both states, both cities, both counties and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finally decided they had to do something drastic, said Groen.

The cities and counties waive their no-shooting regulations for a couple of days during the fall hunting season. Hunters, who are selected by drawing, are accompanied by wildlife officers to such unlikely places as Hells Gate State Park in Idaho and a vacant field next to Lewiston’s Costco store.

Since the hunts began, the geese have become less aggressive, said Groen. Some city geese have become country geese.

“Being a hunting and fishing agency supported by hunters’ dollars, we look for opportunities to expand hunting opportunities,” he said. “We definitely prefer that to destroying eggs.”

Groen said he’s received no complaints about the hunts and seen none in the letters-to-the-editor section of the local newspaper.

“As a matter of fact, on one hunt we had people cheering from the decks of their houses,” he said.