Mention Canada geese and Monty Anderson spews venom over the never-ending battle he and his Windsor-area golf course maintenance cohorts have been fighting as their population continue to escalate.
The federal government allowed the city of St. Catharines to relocate some of its Canada geese last year to the Amherstburg area, where Monty Anderson has been fighting a losing battle to keep them at bay.
Anderson, who oversees the maintenance of Point West golf course, calls the birds that are multiplying by the thousands “shitting machines.”
Each goose can poop up to one pound per day and cleaning up their mess is a never-ending saga for landowners.
“They are awful,” Anderson said. “They are overwhelming and can take over. I’m fanatical about it, but it’s a problem for everybody.”
Municipalities across southern Ontario and several midwestern U.S. states — as far away as Missouri — are struggling to control the goose population. Authorities in Wisconsin annually kill up to 2,000, some of which get fed to homeless shelters.
Environment Canada says the population has jumped to at least 80,000 breeding pairs of geese, which mate for life. There are thousands more of non-breeding geese, which are not as accurately tracked.
And they’re no longer flying south. “They are quite happy to be urban birds,” said Paul Pratt, the former naturalist for the City of Windsor.
“They will only move with the very worst of weather. We are in the banana belt of Canada, so they will spend the winter here. They are a common site in southern Ontario all year round.”
The most common breed is known as “Giant Canada geese” — a too successful product of a late 1980s government effort to save them from extinction when their numbers dropped to a few thousand.
The population has exploded “because of the way the (human) landscape has changed” with fewer industrial areas, more storm water ponds, green space or pristine residential neighbourhoods,” said Chris Sharp, population management biologist for Environment Canada.
“They will only travel as far as they need to get what they want (food),” Sharp said. “Otherwise, they are going to stay right where they are. They have goslings who then also tend to stay in the same place.”
As their numbers have increased, Environment Canada and its arms-length Canadian Wildlife Services have extended hunting season for Canada geese — the agency says with some success.
Pratt, the conservationist, believes any attempt by municipalities or authorities to battle the goose population in urban settings has already been lost.
“There are too many to move them all,” he said. “It would be an expensive job and they wouldn’t stay away. We do need to adapt to them now.”
Environment Canada is recommending municipalities take matters into their own hands to “manage their goose population,” especially during the breeding season, Sharp said.
Those attempts should include pursuing permits from Canadian Wildlife Services to remove eggs, relocate or remove nests. Cities can also control the landscape by leaving grass at parks or sports fields longer, especially in the spring when they breed, or erect barriers near water features.
About 800 permits are issued each year in Ontario to municipalities, golf courses and individuals, such as farmers, to allow for the above proactive actions to control the population. The birds can also be hunted with a separate permit issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests.
City of Windsor administrators issued a report in mid-2016 on the local goose population with recommended options that included scare tactics, physical movement and “lethal control techniques.”
