September 2015 - Parks & Recreation - 91

move the nonmigratory geese out of
conflict with the public in high-use
park areas.
Preventing Geese Problems
Smith, Craven and Curtis, authors of
" Managing Canada Geese in Urban
Environments: A Technical Guide, "
point out that identifying the characteristics of a site that make it attractive to geese (security, food, nesting
sites, water) is key to successfully
managing the problem. They go on
to say that " Choosing techniques
while ignoring the biological or behavioral aspects of goose activity will
likely not solve the problem. "
Control techniques can range from
imposing a year-round ban on feeding the geese using signs that explain
why it is important not to feed them,
to modifying the landscape, installing
devices or using methods to scare them
away, using repellents or chemicals,
and/or capturing and relocating them.
Depending on the method(s) chosen,
costs will vary. Since Canada geese
are a federally protected species, before choosing the method(s) to resolve
the problem, Smith, Craven and Curtis recommend checking with local or
state government to ensure you're not
violating any laws or regulations.
CPD chose to use a goose repellent
(in this case one that uses an environmentally safe compound called
anthraquinone formulated by Arkion
Life Sciences - more information
can be found at www.flightcontrolparksandrec.com) designed to both
send the geese a visual warning and
provide an innocuous, but unpleasant, consequence for eating treated turf. When sprayed on turf, the
compound absorbs ultraviolet light,
something the geese can see even
though humans can't. This sends a
visual signal to the geese that some	

thing is wrong with their food. When
geese sample treated turf it gives
them a stomachache, a harmless but
effective digestive irritation that reinforces the message that this isn't the
grass to eat, so they avoid treated turf
in the future.
For Chris Cassani, executive director of the Park and Forestry Department in Quincy, Massachusetts, and
Nik Banda, deputy city manager and
economic development director for
Rochester, New York, using Arkion
Life Sciences' goose repellant also
resulted in a cleaner park. According
to Banda, hundreds of people a day
come to the park, and people fish the
pond all day long in the summer, often
sitting or standing on the banks of the
pond. " If they're standing or sitting in
goose feces, it's not a good thing, " he
says. At first the city's parks department tried scaring the geese away with
dogs and noisemakers but the geese
returned as soon as the dogs left and
several people thought the explosions
sounded like gunshots, so the department stopped using them.
In Quincy, Massachusetts, the
city's protected, fenced-in sports
fields were especially attractive to
Canada geese. The fields provide
abundant food, while the fences offered protection and visual warning
of attack for the geese. Cassani also
opted to use the repellent. " We saw
a flock feed for a little while then go
away, " he says. " It was a night and
day difference, particularly at one

soccer field. We went from hundreds
of geese down to essentially none in
a short time. "
In addition to adding signage that
explains the importance of not feeding
the geese, other habitat modifications
can include either planting a species
of grass that the geese do not like, tall
fescue for example, or, where possible
replacing the lawn with unpalatable
ground cover such as periwinkle, Japanese pachysandra and English ivy. A
more involved and bit costlier method
includes increasing the slope of the
bank of the pond or lake to 64 degrees
or steeper for a length of at least 2 meters. Scare tactics, such as using border
collies, erecting silhouettes of predatory animals, using boats, planes or helicopters or other types of noisemaking
devices, work only if used repeatedly
and, in the case of cutout effigies, if
moved regularly.
For more information about the
techniques that are most effective for
different situations, we recommend
you consult the earlier mentioned,
" Managing Canada Geese in Urban
Environments: A Technical Guide, "
by Smith, Craven and Curtis, or visit
the Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management at http://icwdm.
org/handbook/birds/canadageese/
ControlTechniquesHome.aspx.
Parks & Recreation magazine Managing Editor Sonia Myrick contributed to
this report.
Del Williams is a technical writer based in
Torrance, California (deldewayne@gmail.com).

W W W. N R PA . O R G | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 5 |

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