Geese Speak

Dear Liz,

Curm thinks Liz George is an absolute riot!

Watching this, most "normal" people would say, "Well, the town has already spent probably $75K trying to fix the problem, it sure wouldn't hurt to try this lady's solution!"

So, Liz, get out your camera and go interview the Town Manager. Ask him "why not?" And post the interview on Baristanet!

Best,
Curm

Option #3: Make the park less attractive to geese.

Drain the pond. fill in the hole with sand and topsoil. Install nice fountain with benches. Plant sod on topsoil.

Geese go bye-bye.

I was at the town council meeting when Geese Peace spoke. They offered no solutions any different then what the previous company tried (and failed).

Maybe Geese Peace can really use the same techniques more effectively, not sure how though.

Unfortunately, Option #3 above is probably they only way to truly get rid of the geese.

And I agree with Curm, how about the other side from the Town Manager?

I dunno. I've seen plenty of geese on soccer fields and other places without a pond immediately nearby. Removing the pond won't get rid of the geese.

Can't we just take up hunting them again? Apparently it worked pretty well in the 19th century.

Why not replace the grass with a huge wildflower meadow, except the ballfields, which can be replaced with artificial turf.
Leave the memorial island as is, so some grass is still there for the geese.

There are new strategies being proposed in environmental and sustainable living grass root organizations relating to slow foods and local foods. Some people focused on solutions for sustainable living are looking at small game hunting as a form of alternative food source. One environmentalist friend who is currently an Environmental Studies grad student at MSU while looking at the geese in the park said, “We need food, we need to reduce our carbon foot print, and we have an over population of geese. We should hunt and eat the geese.” She is currently learning small game hunting. Granted, this is not a long term solution for sustainable living. We also need to reduce the amount of meat we eat and we could easily hunt New Jersey barren. Like most things in relating to sustainable living it will take a multifaceted approach. Small game hunting is a solution.

lasermike

Brookdale park drained it's pond. A couple of years later there are virtually no geese to be found there.

Keep the pond, kill the geese.

MB,

Could you elaborate a bit for me? Do they drain the pond and after a few years re-fill it or is the pond just completely sacrificed for the sake of getting rid of geese?

It would be really heart breaking if all of the beautiful ponds in our parks were drained just to deal with some pesky birds. Really cutting off our collective nose to spite the face.

The pond was drained a lay fallow for a couple of years. It was filled in and used to create a new park for the little ones.

I remember the geese turds on the lawn there. We used to play frisbee near the pond but moved, ironically, up to Edgmont Park in Montclair to toss the disk.

I agree about draining ponds. It smacks of defeatism. However, I have to say I have a real problem with killing them.

.. killing geese, not ponds ... doh!

Keep the pond, kill the geese.

But will that solve the problem? Much like right wingers and other pests, the supply seems inexhaustible.

Have a little faith in Natural Selection, 91.

If you kill them they won't come.
(eventually)

"Much like left wingers and other pests, you'd rather just give up and live with the poop forever."

"Much like left wingers and other pests, you'd rather just give up and live with the poop forever."

I never said to give up. My college had the same issue with geese, and it was disgusting.

However, I don't see how killing some geese now prevents other geese from coming next year. Do geese have some communications system I'm not aware of?

Perhaps, Mike91, but the only thing more inexhaustible seems to be the supply of bleeding-heart animal-rights types who simply do not want to acknowledge that humans are indeed as much a predator to geese as any other animal, and that it is the natural order of things for us to kill geese, not going around shaking their eggs in the hopes they won't hatch (or whatever addled goose birth-control plan they have come up with now).

Del DeMaio of NJ Geese Peace provides two strong arguments for hunting in that video, although that's not her position. First, she seems to ridicule the previous efforts to scare away the geese with cardboard cutouts of predators, and by floating fake alligators and plastic "dead geese" in the pond. She says, "If it doesn't look like a predator, act like a predator, and smell like a predator, the geese won't stay away". There ya go. Since we don't have any wolves and coyotes and other hunting animals around here - and I doubt many Baristavillians would welcome them either - man is the only "predator" left, so on with the hunt.

She also notes that the first order of business should be "population stability". I would agree. And to your question, Mike91, that is how you deal with the "inexhaustible" supply. You need to first dramatically reduce the population to a manageable and sustainable level, and then periodically cull the population to keep it in check, because goose reproduction rates have evolved to assure the survivability of a few goslings in broods where most of them were killed early on by predators. The lack of any other natural predator, other than man, is one reason for the explosive growth in goose populations.

Again, what's the quickest, most efficient way to dramatically reduce the goose population, aside from hunting? There is none.

"However, I don't see how killing some geese now prevents other geese from coming next year. Do geese have some communications system I'm not aware of?"

I am no expert, but from what I have read, they return to where they were bred year after year. So once a flock has established itself they will return, and their offspring will return, etc. etc.

So, unfortunately, you have to eradicate the entire flock.

That's not to say you won't have to occasionally bump off a few new ones every so often, but if you get rid of the flock there now, the problem is largely solved.

However, I don't see how killing some geese now prevents other geese from coming next year. Do geese have some communications system I'm not aware of?

Yes, I've seen postings on Craigslist from geese trading notes on the best places to eat and poop because the silly humans there won't hurt them.

But seriously, part of the problem, Mike91, is that the geese do not now "come next year". They stay put, and don't migrate. The reason is that suburban landscapes are so attractive to geese, so full of abundant food sources even in winter, and so devoid of predators, that the geese have lost their natural incentive to leave. Instead, they stay, they eat, they poop, and they make more geese, who eat more, poop more, and make even more geese, and thus the cycle continues exponentially.

While hunting may not persuade the geese to seek other venues, or discourage new ones from coming, it would greatly reduce the resident population that refuses to budge.

hat's not to say you won't have to occasionally bump off a few new ones every so often

That's right - whack a few, and the rest will get the message. This is New Jersey, after all.

if you get rid of the flock there now, the problem is largely solved

I support this approach, but I can almost hear Joe Stalin saying, "No goose, no problem!"

careful with that talk, we'll have a "concentration camp" comparison soon enough anyway, if past history is a guide.

It would be a real shame if that pond was eliminated because of some birds.

Perhaps, but I suspect that some of the geese lovers, er, advocates would have us as the prisoners and the geese as the guards.