Polliwog Park’s Canada geese (poop) problem lingers
“Is that geese screaming at us?” asked Mayor Joe Franklin, midway through last week’s city council meeting. “Geese are mean,” said Councilperson Amy Howorth. The council are understandably spooked. Manhattan Beach has a Canada geese problem, or more specifically, a Canada geese poop problem, and despite two and a half years of effort to address it, matters are worsening. The geese are confounding the city’s efforts to make them leave. Through the 1970s, the Canada geese who visited Polliwog Park were tourists. They wintered, and when the weather warmed they went home. Somewhere along the way, they stopped leaving. The park has a pond to escape into, acres of irrigated turf to eat, and a steady supply of residents with bags of bread. There is no natural predator. It is, Public Works Director Ramzi Awwad told the council, “a great place for geese, like it is for humans. They like being here.” “The living is good here in Manhattan Beach,” Howorth said. The city began studying the problem in May 2024. That November it hired biologist Robert Hamilton, who walked the park, interviewed residents, and last September gave the council a menu of countermeasures: an anti-feeding campaign, a…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com