Environment – The Canada goose problem

Branta Canadensis, Canada goose. I saw them flying low overhead, so close that I could see their stocky golden bodies and black heads. They were stunning, and an inspiration for an experimental lino-print artwork (pictured) later that night.

Canada geese are native to the Arctic and temperate regions of North America and sometimes, during their migration, are also found across Northern Europe. Over-hunting and habitat loss meant some subspecies were thought to be extinct, and others were decimated in their native range by the early 20th century. Recovery efforts saw numbers recover, though some subspecies are still in decline.

They were introduced widely across the world, including New Zealand in 1905, and also to Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Sweden, Denmark, Chile, Argentina and Japan. They’ve readily adapted to human-modified environments so proliferate on pasture and parkland, in rural and urban areas, as well as in swamps and estuaries. Like most geese, they are mainly herbivorous, and with few natural predators, especially in places like New Zealand, they have grown to numbers considered problematic for people wanting to picnic or play sports, or graze animals where there’s competition between geese and grazers for grass.

They’ve become considered a pest for their large volumes of poo, and because they are territorial and defensive, they can hassle people for food, especially where people have been feeding them in the past, and because of their crop damage, their noise and their very successful presence. In high numbers, their poo can cause water pollution and waterborne disease. There are also fears that they crowd out and displace native species.

Canada geese are mostly migratory, so those I saw flying in a V were off to congregate and moult near some freshwater source. There, they are public enemy number one because of their large numbers on golf courses, playgrounds and river edges.

Every year around the country there are ‘culling’ programmes to shoot large numbers of birds. That management approach disturbs many people, including me, as the geese are killed for being successful adapters to highly modified human environments. Humans brought them here, almost wiped them out in their natural habitats and now kill them in volumes for simply being geese.

More creative management responses have included installing coyote or wolf-shaped silhouettes that are moved around the fields where the geese are considered a pest. Non-lethal approaches are definitely more humane. But there are concerns that the geese will just go elsewhere, perhaps in even more concentrated numbers, and moving them on doesn’t solve the problem of too many geese.

Just killing geese for eating and pooping in the wrong places, for being successful adapters to a human-modified world, is the least acceptable response. It’s inappropriate to just kill what annoys us.

The real problem with Canada geese is us.