While Canadian geese are a national symbol, animals can cause many problems for the cities in which they live, leaving employees struggling to find solutions to mitigate their populations.
In recent decades, British Columbia-based urban biodiversity planner Jennifer Ray Pierce has said that Canadian geese have been ridiculed as urban pests invading new habitats in North America, especially in cities.
Pierce told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday that the problem is not with the migrating geese, but rather with the “resident geese”, which in some cases have settled in urban areas all year round.
She explained that the two are the same species of birds, but each has a different migratory behavior.
“Geese that do not migrate and stay in one place have a greater impact on the ecosystem because they do not behave the way they evolved to behave. That means their grazing patterns have a bigger impact, and so does the feces, or when they’re pooping on the ground, they don’t move that much, “Pierce said.
A goose can defecate up to once every 12 minutes, producing up to two kilograms of feces each day, according to Go Geese Go. Pierce said large herds of this could remove lawns and damage irrigation systems.
Canadian geese can also cause damage to agricultural and natural resources, including attacks on cereals, overgrazing and deteriorating water quality on farms.
Geese can also be aggressive and can sometimes cause injuries, especially to young children or pets when nesting in cities.
Pierce said these problems are more common in the spring, as this is when the geese have hatched and the adult birds are moulting at the same time – replacing all the feathers on the body, wings and tail shortly after the nesting season.
“This means that geese are less able to fly and gather in greater numbers together, as certain pairs of geese will care for a large group of geese at once,” Pierce said, adding that the impact of the geese then concentrates in urban areas without predators.
According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, at least seven million Canadian geese live in North America, with about 4.5 million in Canada.
However, Canadian geese and their growing population are a problem produced by Canada.
Prior to European colonization, historical nesting sites for Canadian geese were limited to southwestern Ontario and the southern prairies. But in the early 20th century, unregulated hunting brought Canadian geese to the brink of extinction from these native habitats.
This has sparked a concerted effort by wildlife farmers to raise birds on their farms to increase the number of Canadian geese and introduce them to new areas.
As forests have been destroyed in favor of commercial crops and lawns and shores have been maintained, introduced geese, which were never taught to migrate during the reintroduction period, flock to these open pastures, which offer plenty of food and relatively few predators. .
“Without predators and other natural methods of population control, these populations are simply growing exponentially. [geese] they find that cities are amazing habitats for them with plenty of food, very few predators and that’s why it’s just the perfect place to increase population, “Pierce said.
As a result, the federal government has approved hundreds of permits to kill and use predators to scare away geese each year. However, killing can be controversial, and some wildlife experts say it is ineffective in the long run because geese lay eggs quickly and in large numbers.
Pierce said various techniques could be used to reduce populations, such as changing eggs and birth control.
“The most common thing is to deal with the egg point population, which usually involves adding eggs or some other system to make eggs unviable,” she explained.
Pierce said adjusting areas to make them less attractive to geese in so-called habitat modification could also help.
“It can be quite simple, including things like providing shrubs or low vegetation around water edges where predators could theoretically hide, and that would make the area less safe for them,” she said.
“Or even in a large lawn, making sure there are branches above the grass so that the geese can’t have nice, clean take-off areas.”
With a file from The Canadian Press
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