Posted on 06/04/2003 1:04:55 PM PDT by Diddle E. Squat
The Canada goose population in Seattle parks is down by about 75 percent from three years ago, when federal agents started rounding up and killing thousands of the birds to control their numbers.
Federal wildlife agents have destroyed more than 5,600 geese in Seattle since a federal judge ruled in 2000 that the government could kill Canada geese in portable gas chambers set up on the back of trucks.
The more aggressive approach has worked to the point where people can "see and enjoy" the geese, but "not be slipping in poop everywhere," said Roger Woodruff, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official in Olympia.
"We're very encouraged by the success of it so far," Woodruff said.
Bacteria in bird waste also is blamed by park officials for causing so-called "swimmer's itch" in local waters. But while Woodruff and Seattle parks officials call the eradication program a success, animal-rights activists are girding for another season of protest. They say the roundups are cruel and unnecessary and advocate nonlethal methods.
At Westlake Center yesterday, activists showed a video of federal agents shoving honking geese into a gas chamber in the back of a truck. One protester wore a goose costume and carried a sign reading: "Seattle — you slay me."
Agents use bread and rowboats to get the geese onto land and into fenced pens in June and July.
For the past three years, activists have staked out area parks, keeping watch in shifts for game agents. If the agents appear, the activists shoo the birds into the water, where they are not allowed to be captured.
Instead of killing birds, opponents including the Humane Society of the United States and PAWS advocate spraying goose eggs — or addling them — with vegetable or mineral oil, which kills the embryos when air can't get through the eggshell.
The most humane way to control geese, opponents say, would be to addle eggs; plant thick shrubs, which discourage them from coming ashore; and use dogs to chase the birds away.
"What they have never done in Seattle is a comprehensive program — doing all of these things at one time for a long period of time," said Jennifer Hillman, a legislative coordinator for the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, or PAWS.
But Woodruff said killing the birds was a last resort. Starting in 1993, agents addled almost 12,000 eggs.
But Canada geese live for about 15 years, so even if their eggs don't hatch one year, they'll try again the next, Woodruff said.
There are about 20,000 adult Canada geese in the Puget Sound area, according to a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife estimate.
Seattle Parks and Recreation spokeswoman Dewey Potter said the city tried other methods before it hired federal wildlife agents on a $3,000-a-year contract to kill birds.
"We hate having to do it," Potter said. "It's painful and we don't like it."
In past years, the city tried attaching a shiny fringe to docks to scare geese away; it sprayed a grape-based substance that tastes bitter to birds to discourage them from eating the grass; and it relocated birds.
Potter said the department has received threatening e-mails and phone calls and protesters demonstrated in front of the home of Parks and Recreation Superintendent Ken Bounds on Sunday and Monday.
"They are slaughtering animals in public parks, and he is the man who is doing it. He should be tormented," said Bob Chorush of Give Geese a Chance.
Solution? When they aren't migrating through, there should be a general depredation order on them. They aren't part of the natural ecosystem and need to be eliminated.
Good idea, Sauron, but way too practical for the bureaucratic mind to grasp.
I was part of a group of hunters that made a similar proposal to our City Council to deal with the excessive deer population in the suburbs. The local politicos wanted to spend public money to hire "professionals" to cull the deer herd in the local metropark system. This seemed like a waste of money, considering they had bowhunters in the community already licensed and qualified to do that, who would probably even spend money for a permit, as opposed to expecting to be paid.
But that was just to skeeeeeery for some locals, many of whom clung to the notion of just "catching the deer and taking them someplace else".
Anyway, they didn't like the idea of hunters with bows and arrows in the parks, so instead they close the parks early a few nights a year and have the locals cops (on overtime, of course) cruise through the parks with a spotlight, jacklighting them using AR-15's from the back of the pickup truck. They give the meat to charity, at least. Seems stupid though.
Oh yeah, sorry to get off-track. We got the same problem with geese, though~~~;P
Since the egg is no longer part of the mother goose, would this be analagous to abortion or infanticide?
As far as geese are concerned, I find that if you just chase them away once a day, consistently, they will find someplace else to live. The industrial area where I work used to have about 200 geese year-round. I started getting them up into the air ever morning just after I got to work, and after about two months of this, I no longer have any geese to chase.
Sure I looked a little silly doing it, but it was good exersize for me, and the grass looks great this Spring, with no goose poop at all.
A Canada goose puts out about 3.5 pounds of goose poop per day.
Several years ago, when I lived on Cape Cod, I played golf on one of the most expensive courses on the Cape. Two or three of the greens were unplayable because of the poop.
One of my friends there was an extreme environmentalist and a sailer. He continually bitched about having to save his poop in his boat and get it pumped out at a pump-out station, while the geese and ducks were pooping all over the place.
I laughed because I saw him slowly getting religion.
Find yourself an old "bird book". They were never Canadian geese. They are now and have been forever - at least for as long as modern ornithologists have been operating - Canada geese. Not Canadian geese.
Welcome to Seattle. You can't make this stuff up...
So much of the view of these folks is romantic idealizing from an artistic angle and a safe distance. I find that proximity and long acquaintance with wild animals serves to remind one that they're successful mostly because they're in one way or another extraordinarily nasty, and that people killing and eating them is not by far the worst fate they face. After all, the only "old animal homes" and the only places on earth they face death by other than starvation or slaughter are the same zoos these folks bleat are inhumane.
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