ahockenberry
05-16-200716th May 2007, 08:07 AM
Thought I would pass along this article that I found from south of the border. I have been curious about geese populations and this points out some staggering facts...we're under siege. Not to mention they can be very aggressive at times:
Article from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2003
The goose, whose population is exploding nationwide, is a formidable opponent in the turf wars being waged in office parks, housing developments, municipal parks and private lawns across the nation.
Though it's mostly a human vs. animal conflict, the geese have allies among animal-loving, animal-feeding humans as well as in animal rights groups. In Westmoreland County last week, the decision to allow the birds to be hunted in four parks brought out protesters who fought for their winged friends by trying to scare them off before hunters could shoot them.
The geese in question are resident geese, not the kind that fly overhead in picturesque V formations in the spring and fall. The resident type earns its name by settling in the same environment suburban humans find appealing: places with manicured grass, a nice quiet pool of water and no predators.
An adult Canada goose weighs from 10 to 17 pounds, eats up to 4 pounds of grass a day and returns about 11/2 pounds of that in unappetizing cigar-shaped form that fouls water and can make parks, lawns and ball fields unusable to humans. There are more than 3.5 million geese in the United States (some estimates put the number at 5 million), with a population that is growing from 10 percent to 17 percent a year.
Canada geese are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1916. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes that most of these geese don't belong under the act because they don't really migrate and thus should not qualify for protection.
The resident geese are descendants of fairly sedentary strains of Canada geese and of released flocks of birds used as decoys.
By the 1930s, hunting had reduced migrating geese populations so much that there were concerted efforts to save them.
When the migratory birds virtually disappeared in Pennsylvania, a race called giant Canadas from Minnesota and Wisconsin were introduced here, said Margaret Brittingham, professor of wildlife resources in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State. They were larger than the Atlantic migrants and never migrated much from their homes in the Midwest.
Article from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2003
The goose, whose population is exploding nationwide, is a formidable opponent in the turf wars being waged in office parks, housing developments, municipal parks and private lawns across the nation.
Though it's mostly a human vs. animal conflict, the geese have allies among animal-loving, animal-feeding humans as well as in animal rights groups. In Westmoreland County last week, the decision to allow the birds to be hunted in four parks brought out protesters who fought for their winged friends by trying to scare them off before hunters could shoot them.
The geese in question are resident geese, not the kind that fly overhead in picturesque V formations in the spring and fall. The resident type earns its name by settling in the same environment suburban humans find appealing: places with manicured grass, a nice quiet pool of water and no predators.
An adult Canada goose weighs from 10 to 17 pounds, eats up to 4 pounds of grass a day and returns about 11/2 pounds of that in unappetizing cigar-shaped form that fouls water and can make parks, lawns and ball fields unusable to humans. There are more than 3.5 million geese in the United States (some estimates put the number at 5 million), with a population that is growing from 10 percent to 17 percent a year.
Canada geese are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1916. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes that most of these geese don't belong under the act because they don't really migrate and thus should not qualify for protection.
The resident geese are descendants of fairly sedentary strains of Canada geese and of released flocks of birds used as decoys.
By the 1930s, hunting had reduced migrating geese populations so much that there were concerted efforts to save them.
When the migratory birds virtually disappeared in Pennsylvania, a race called giant Canadas from Minnesota and Wisconsin were introduced here, said Margaret Brittingham, professor of wildlife resources in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State. They were larger than the Atlantic migrants and never migrated much from their homes in the Midwest.