In an effort to reduce human conflicts with locally-breeding (resident) Canada goose populations in urban and suburban communities, the Service will host nine separate scoping meetings at sites across the country. The meetings will be held to discuss the management options the Service proposes to evaluate in the EIS, and to gather public comments on those options or other potential remedies proposed by the public. A notice detailing the times and locations of these meetings was published in the December 30, 1999 Federal Register.
"Resident Canada geese are having a growing impact on communities across the country, and we need to hear from the people who are most affected as we develop a long-term coordinated strategy for managing these birds," said Service Director Jamie Rappaport Clark. "The scoping process offers the public a voice in the creation of this strategy, as well as the chance to propose their own solutions, whether they attend a meeting or not."
The EIS will be prepared with the goal of providing states with more management flexibility and authority to deal with resident Canada goose populations, while establishing criteria for population goals and objectives, management planning and population monitoring.
Potential options include non-lethal methods such as managing habitat to make it less attractive to geese; harassment, trapping and relocation of birds; and more direct population stabilization and reduction programs. The final set of alternatives to be analyzed in the EIS will be determined based on comments received during the public scoping process that began with the August 19, 1999 publication of a Notice of Intent.
Most Canada goose populations are migratory, wintering in the southern United States and migrating north to summer breeding grounds in the Canadian arctic. But increasing urban and suburban development in the U.S. has resulted in the creation of ideal goose habitat conditions-- park-like open areas with short grass adjacent to small bodies of water. These habitat conditions have in turn enticed rapidly-growing numbers of locally-breeding geese to live year round on golf courses, parks, airports and other public and private property.
In recent years, biologists have documented tremendous increases in populations of Canada geese that nest predominantly within the United States. Recent surveys suggest that the Nations resident breeding population now exceeds 1 million birds in both the Atlantic and the Mississippi Flyways and is continuing to increase. In the Mississippi Flyway alone, the 1998 spring Canada goose population estimate exceeded 1.1 million birds, an increase of 21 percent from 1997. Resident Canada goose populations are increasingly coming into conflict with human activities in many parts of the country. In parks and other open areas near water, large goose flocks denude lawns of vegetation and create conflicts with their droppings and feather litter. Goose droppings in heavy concentrations can overfertilize lawns, contribute to excessive algae growth in lakes that can result in fish kills, and potentially contaminate municipal water supplies. Geese have also been involved in a growing number of aircraft strikes at airports across the country, resulting in dangerous takeoff and landing conditions and costly repairs.
For decades, the Service attempted to address the problem by adjusting hunting season frameworks and issuing control permits on a case-by-case basis. But hunting restrictions in most urban and suburban communities have limited efforts to increase the harvest of resident geese, and the Service has been overwhelmed by requests for control permits.
On June 17, 1999 the Service created a new special Canada goose permit that gives state wildlife agencies the opportunity to design their own management programs and to take actions to control specific resident goose populations without having to seek a separate permit from the Service for each action.
Designed to give states greater flexibility to respond to specific problems with resident geese, the new permit should satisfy the need for an efficient short-term management program until a comprehensive long-term management strategy can be developed and implemented.
Nine public scoping meetings will be held in February and March of 2000 in the following cities at the indicated dates, locations and times:
