Last Saturday (October 2), we saw the season’s first flock of migrant geese flying high over the sodden wasteland of Putnam County. The leaves have turned early in protest at the recent end to the summer’s scorched earth drought and we’ve just lit our first fire of the season in GEESE OFF! headquarters. These changes in the air mean that our goose control Border collies are about to get busy – very busy.
canada goose
Experts believe migratory Canada geese have had a good breeding season in the northern tundra. They’re now on their way south with their young in their slip-stream. gnshvnfyrwc
This land is our land
Suburban development and wholesale re-forestation on the eastern seaboard (the northeast in particular) has led to less arable farm-land. This has squeezed Canada geese on the Atlantic fly-way into less space. The result has been more and more geese ending their journeys around the New York metro area. They feed on recently-installed, irrigated playing fields on schools and public parks where the quality of grass is higher than before and the hunter’s rifle absent.
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Canada geese are also attracted to the larger, lusher lawns so conveniently located in the upscale suburbs of Long Island’s Gold Coast and along the northern shore of Long Island Sound. They have even been seen as urban vandals in New York’s public parks from Central Park to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The Department of Agriculture, in partnership with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the city’s Mayor, Michael Blomberg have agreed a seven mile exclusion zone around JFK and LaGuardia where resident geese are to be culled every year in the summer molt.
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There are two small problems with this plan.
1. Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where some 400 geese were rounded up and slaughtered last summer, is outside the seven mile killing zone
2. They cannot catch and kill the migrant geese that downed Sully’s plane in the Hudson.
A rounding error
Round-ups, culls and killings scratch at the region’s goose problems. Requiring a shift in public taste and opinion, the solutions are easy to see, yet fairly difficult to execute. Firstly, we have to lose our infatuation with heavily watered and manicured lawns in favor of more ground cover plants, shrubs and trees. This will drive geese back inland to parkway verges and winter grazing areas. It will also keep them longer in the wetlands, bays and inlets where they will have to re-learn how to feed on secondary quality forage and aquatic plants – their staple diet before the advent of excessive fertilization and irrigation.
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Secondly, more property owners will have to use companies like GEESE OFF! to move the birds away and keep them away from areas of conflict. As we have done for many clients in the tristate region over the last eight years, we can undertake this form of humane goose control effectively.
