Foster City has a poop problem, and it doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.
For years the Canada Goose population has multiplied in the city, which sits right next to the bay and has several parks along a central lagoon that attracts waterfowl from all over. The increase in Canada geese has also brought with it poop in parks, streets and waterways, sparking complaints from residents fed up with the unwanted feces and want the city to manage the geese population.
But when Foster City proposed several non-lethal and lethal means to deal with the increase in geese, one group of neighbors banded together to protect the geese.
Foster City resident Erik Allen, an organizer for Direct Action Everywhere and part of the National Goose Protection Coalition, held a protest last week along with several elected officials from the Peninsula to protest the city’s plan to cull the goose population by at least 100 birds after seeing another year-over-year increase of 10%, a trend which has persisted in recent years.
In a statement to this news organization, city spokesman Austin Walsh said Foster City is looking into goose deterrent techniques “to protect its community from the potential health hazards posed by the overabundant and non-migratory Canada Goose population” in an effort to keep parks and open spaces “safe and sanitary.” That’s why “depredation” (or attacking and killing the birds) is “being considered as an option to be applied selectively and in conjunction with nonlethal alternatives.”
Those other nonlethal alternatives could be using lasers to shoo the birds away or installing fences.
“To that end, the city has explored a broad range of creative and innovative potential Goose deterrents such as robot technology, while also considering landscape modifications to make Foster City less attractive to the geese,” Walsh said. “The city will continue to consider all options available, and is committed to continuous engagement with community members, advocacy agencies, politicians, and all other stakeholders as this issue evolves.”
In recent years, Foster City beaches have ranked among the most polluted in California, in large part due to poop from water birds. According to Santa Barbara-based nonprofit Heal the Bay’s annual Beach Bummer report, two beaches in Foster City ranked among the top 10 dirtiest in the state, and the city isn’t happy about it.
Along with testing the water quality of the city’s central lagoon regularly, the city is also looking at decreasing its waterfowl population to get rid of its bad reputation.
Allen said in an interview that Foster City can’t move forward with its plan without input from the community and a California Environmental Quality Act report, and city officials said there’s no plan to advance the goose culling plan any time soon, though they would not say if protests had anything to do with it.
For now, it seems, the geese have been spared. But Allen isn’t counting it as a win yet.
“It’s not a victory until they make a public statement saying they will not move forward with depredation of geese,” Allen said. “If they put it on the back burner and never talk about it again, I’ll accept that. But I’d prefer for them to realize that their plan to kill birds is not an effective way to control the poop on the ground.”
Allen said he’s involved in geese conservation efforts across the country, and noted that Foster City isn’t the only place where residents are complaining about the mess geese are making at their parks and lakes, such as in McCook, Nebraska, Duluth, Minnesota or Las Vegas, Nevada. He’s hoping Foster City will go like Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, where protests and community action stopped the council from killing dozens of geese.
In Santa Clara, where geese posed a similar problem as in Foster City, city officials successfully reduced the number of geese through nonlethal means by using birth control.
“This happens everywhere,” Allen said. “The USDA alone killed 26,000 geese last year. There’s easier ways to do it without killing them.”
Allen said the city should instead invest money on building fences, and barriers and reducing the geese’s natural habitat in the area, meaning the removal of lawns and planting of tall grasses along the waterfront.
Supervisor David Canepa agreed the city should seek non-lethal means to deal with the geese situation.
“Seagulls poop. Pigeons poop. Crows poop and so do ducks but no one is talking about killing them so why should we kill the geese?” Canepa said. “This is one of America’s greatest planned cities but unfortunately its founders did not plan for the geese that have called Foster City home for generations. I am urging the city Council to accept the Animal Protection League’s offer to pay for a comprehensive plan that will address the poop problem for decades to come rather than relying on a short-term scheme to pay someone to snap the necks of these geese at a total cost of $100,000 to $250,000. We need to learn to live with the geese because, after all, ‘Everybody Poops’.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com