Ask Dan Hicks about the iconic Canadian goose and the first thing you’ll get is to laugh.
“Oh, you mean the ever-evolving pursuit of geese?” Hicks said in a telephone interview from his office in Moncton.
As director of park operations in the city, he has been dealing with bird complaints for years.
“That’s what they leave behind,” Hicks said. “They’re quite fruitful in that regard.”
Dan Hicks, director of Moncton Parks, has tried several methods to reduce the impact of geese. (Shane Magi / CBC)
There is a good reason for people to describe a fast and efficient process as comparable to the speed at which feces move through a goose.
Forecasts indicate that the goose will pee several times an hour and up to 20 times a day.
So, a flock of 20 to 30 Canadian geese can make a mess in a short amount of time.
“You see people driving a Canadian goose two steps down the paths in the park,” Hicks said with a smile.
But the results of this fruitful production are no laughing stock for Hicks and his park staff.
Moncton uses floating lights that flash every two to four seconds at night, designed to keep Canadian geese awake and prevent them from using Lake Jones and Centennial Park. (Away with the Geese / Sent)
Hicks said he saw places where they counted 5 to 10 “small gifts” per square foot of lawn.
Birds can make it impossible for people to enjoy urban green spaces by polluting lawns with feces and by behaving aggressively, protecting their nests and young.
Stools, if numerous enough and close to water, can also cause E. coli contamination, leading to algae blooms and cessation of swimming and other activities.
Hicks said the city spends about $ 15,000 a year on equipment to discourage geese from nesting where they are not wanted.
There are also several days of work on setting up this equipment and the hours spent watching it work.
And sometimes it is only slightly effective.
A group of Canadian geese were collected by biologists on the island of Toronto in June 1993 to be sent to New Brunswick for release. About 4,000 Canadian geese were introduced to New Brunswick in the 1990s in this way. (CBC)
This has not always been the case.
For decades, Canadian geese have been a rare sight in New Brunswick.
According to the Atlantic Marine Ecology Assessment of Species Diversity, published in 2010, there were reports of Canadian geese nesting in New Brunswick in the 1800s and early 1900s, but the population probably disappeared by 1905.
Occasionally, Canadian geese were seen in New Brunswick, but it was not until the early 1990s that breeding populations began to be reported in Maine and southern New Brunswick.
It is believed that most of these birds were introduced intentionally or accidentally.
Then, in 1993, Frank McKenna’s provincial government began importing Canadian geese from Ontario.
Canadian geese are loaded on a truck in Toronto bound for New Brunswick. (CBC)
These geese, known as giant Canadian geese, are genetically different from the geese that were once called the New Brunswick House.
And their recent appearance in Ontario and Quebec has caused headaches for people who care for green spaces in municipalities in the southern part of the two provinces.
In June 1993, 500 were gathered in a park in Toronto, loaded onto trucks and brought to New Brunswick.
The man behind the idea, Pat Kehoe, who was the province’s wetland habitat manager, was asked by a CBC Toronto reporter at the time why New Brunswick wanted them.
Keho replied, “Because you don’t want them.”
Canadian geese in a park in Moncton in 2013 (Kate Letterick / CBC)
Keho, who now works for Ducks Unlimited, declined to be interviewed for the article.
Eventually, more than 4,000 Canadian Ontario geese were introduced to the area in the mid-1990s in an attempt to create a hunting population.
And not everyone thought it was a good idea.
Alain Clavett, a naturalist and birder, was one of many people who sounded the alarm.
“I remember saying, ‘Don’t do this.’ This is stupid, “Clavet said in a telephone interview.” You’re actually introducing a subspecies of Canadian goose that we’re not even sure has ever been here.
“And they were going to take them because they were creating chaos in Ontario.”
Breeder Alain Clavett said the decision to bring Canadian geese to New Brunswick was a mistake. “It’s a man-made problem.” (Twitter)
Clavett said he was worried that large, aggressive birds would overtake smaller waterfowl for nesting and food.
He said he had seen evidence of this in the lake at his own property, where he had seen various species of waterfowl, but no longer.
“What do you think is going on? There are two pairs of Canadian geese. That’s it. That’s all,” Clavett said.
“All kinds of green wings, duck and whatever else nesting in this little wetland I created was taken over by the geese.”
Clavett said he had seen similar situations in wetlands in southeastern New Brunswick, including the Belt Street in Moncton, also known as Wilson Marsh.
He calls this a man-made problem, an introduction that is exacerbated by the way we create green spaces.
Family of Canadian geese. Adult geese can be aggressive, especially when they have geese. (Al Hanson / Sent)
“If we stop treating the environment like a fucking golf course, you know, shrubs, tall grasses, wild plants – they don’t [even try] these things, “Clavet said.” They hate them. If a fox can hide in any environment, it hates being there.
“But what we do, we remove all that and replace it [with] grass. Open grass. “
It is difficult to know exactly how many Canadian geese there are now in New Brunswick.
“We don’t have absolute numbers,” said Al Hanson, head of the water assessment of the Canadian Atlantic Wildlife Service.
“But we do an annual survey of waterfowl across the province, and it shows that what we call moderately breeding populations of Canadian geese are increasing in New Brunswick.”
In fact, Hanson said, the population has been expanding in northeastern North America for decades.
And, he said, the decision to relocate here probably only hastened the inevitable.
“Even if this introduction had not taken place in the early 1990s, the geese would probably have been here and would have moved to the area anyway as part of this larger population increase in the Eastern North. America.
A short fence placed along a section of Lake Jones. It is also used around the island in Centennial Park. (Kate Letterick / CBC News)
Hanson said the thinking at the time was that New Brunswick, which has a more rural hunting culture, would keep populations under control.
“But there is a small gap, even in New Brunswick, between where these boys live and the possibility of hunting,” he said.
Annoying geese cause headaches in urban conditions, where hunting is simply not possible.
So the solution now is to find ways to discourage geese from nesting and living in urban green spaces.
We set up fake coyotes on the island in Centennial Park as part of our approach to goose management. We would like to reassure the residents that they are fake and were placed there on purpose. pic.twitter.com/Es1SdENNdS
– @ CityofMoncton
For Dan Hicks in Moncton and the municipal staff in the communities around New Brunswick, this is a bit of a puzzle.
Hicks has many tricks in his arsenal. He put flashing lights in the lakes at night to annoy the geese.
The city is setting up a net near the water’s edge, hoping that the lack of access to water will discourage geese from nesting, as it would be impossible to bring non-flying geese to the safety of the lake.
They had some success with that.
They also try coyote lures and something called a Fly-Away laser, “basically a big flashlight.”
As early as 2013, Hicks even experimented with the Goosinator, a bright orange remote-controlled vehicle designed to scare away geese.
Dan Hicks said Goosinator is fun to work with, but doesn’t seem to cause much concern to the geese. (CBC)
Hicks said he and his staff had a great time driving it around, but after a week-long free trial, it was clear it wasn’t “playful” and it was sent back to the company that created it.
The latest experiment is a fake alligator mooring in a pond, although Hicks said he would be sure to notify 911 operators if he scared away visitors.
Hicks said it was all about trying to find a balance that both species could live on, while avoiding harsher tactics such as adding eggs, moving birds or destroying an annoying herd.
“We are not there yet and we hope we will not be.”
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