by Mark McDermott
Once upon a not-too-distant past, the Canada Geese who came to Polliwog Park were just wintering. When things warmed up they would go back to Canada, among other places, following their migratory pattern. But somewhere along the way, things changed. The geese stayed. Food supplies in and near Polliwog, apparently, led them to cease their wandering ways.
What made this particularly apparent was the sidewalk bordering the pond at Polliwog. Two weeks ago, Sean Roberts, the field operations manager for the City of Manhattan Beach’s Public Works department, presented the input-output equation of the local Canada Goose to the City Council.
“Up to 95 Canada Geese have been seen at Polliwog at the same time,” Roberts said. “The Canada Goose can live upwards of 24 years. They are approximately 12 pounds in weight. And the staggering number here is they can consume four pounds of grass per day, and create about three pounds of fecal matter — times 80 birds a day, times a week, times a month…You can do the math on the amount of fecal matter.”
This amount of excrement creates a multitude of issues, Roberts said, including the fact that the fecal matter contains bacteria, possibly E. Coli, and human exposure to it has also been known to cause a so-called “swimmer’s itch,” among other things. Another issue is what Roberts called the park’s “unkept appearance” due to the goose droppings.
“We do pressure wash this area twice a week, but you can pressure wash it at 9 a.m. and come back at 3 p.m. and it looks like we didn’t do a thing,” he said. “It also decreases the user experience for not only residents, but other parkgoers, and dogs. The fecal matter is not only located just on the walking trails, but pretty much all throughout the park — in the grass areas, the gazebos, the brand new playground facility that we have built. It’s everywhere.”
The City hired biologist Robert Hamilton to help devise a way to deal with the poop. Hamilton’s report notes that Polliwog attracts many kinds of waterbirds, including Mallards, domestic ducks, American Coots, American Wigeons, Ring-billed, Western, and California Gulls, Doublecrested Cormorants, Black-crowned Night Herons, and Snowy Egrets. All contribute to the fecal matter problem, but none as much as the geese. Management strategies aimed at the geese are likely to also affect the other birds, he noted.
Hamilton’s report made five recommendations. The first was to reduce food opportunities for the geese through a public outreach campaign and signage in the park, coupled with a new ordinance that would prohibit feeding wildlife.
The second was the installation of a three to four foot fence around the pond in Polliwog “that kind of inhibits the flight plan and the ease of access for the Canada Goose,” Hamilton said.
The third recommendation was hazing the birds with green lasers, something city staff would need to do with great frequency. The method, Hamilton said, is approved by the Humane Society and involves shooting the lasers at the geese’s feet. “You are not putting it in their eyes or anything,” he said. But this method also requires a lot of manpower. “This just isn’t a one and done. This would be an ongoing effort to chase them out of their areas and get them uncomfortable and have them leave the water estuaries and their surroundings.”
The next recommendation was to reduce the population by reducing reproduction. “This is known as addling the eggs,” Hamilton said. “Basically, this would be a professional who would have to come in. They humanely addle the eggs by oiling, removing them from the nest, or replacing with dummy eggs.”
Finally, the biologist’s report recommended measures that would make nearby fields less attractive to the geese, not just in Polliwog but sports fields in the surrounding neighborhoods, including Begg Field, Heights Field, and those at Manhattan Beach Middle School. The grass on these fields is perfect goose food. “We have almost the perfect scenario for a food source for these birds,” Hamilton said. The proposed solution was to apply goose repellant to the grasses on these fields.
This repellant would be sprayed on,” Roberts said. “It is meant basically to make the grass not so desirable, whether it’s stomach issues or just the taste in general. One of the ingredients is from grape skins, so you might get a little bit of the smell of grape with that.”
One other option, not included in the recommendations, was a contractor called Duty Calls who specializes in picking up animal excrement.
“That is their claim to fame, to pick up fecal matter, either from dogs or birds,” Hamilton said. “A twice a week service from them is about $42,000 a year. If they were to do it three times per week, that would be close to $50,000 per year.”
Councilperson Joe Franklin asked if the Canada Geese had any natural predators. Hamilton said coyotes are the main natural predator for the geese. Coincidentally, they are the City’s other problem wildlife problem because they prey on local pets.
“They do sell fake coyotes like decoy coyotes, but they’re not going to work unless there’s some actual lethality. The birds figure it out pretty fast,” he said.
Mayor David Lesser asked about an article he’d forwarded to Hamilton, about Foster City’s attempts to chase away its geese.
“Some of the strategies that are posed for here did not work, and what they’re now resorting to has to do with a drone that looks like some sort of a falcon,” Lesser said.
Hamilton said Foster City has a drone that looks like a peregrine falcon, as well as Border Collie dogs who patrol the parks, but they also have a $430,000 budget to deal with the problem.
“They’re also located right on the edge of San Francisco Bay,” he said. “It’s a big, sprawling city that has sloughs and lakes going through it. It’s not one pond with a series of nearby fields…So with a half a million dollar budget and a full time biologist, their basic strategy is Border Collies. It’s the lasers and all the other things we’re talking about, plus helium balloons and floating things in the water, and drones with noises, drones with lights. So maybe they will get rid of the geese, but it’s going to be at a real cost to the human experience.”
Hamilton said that the idea would be to use all five of his strategies at different times and see what works.
“As Mr. Hamilton said, these geese are smart,” Roberts said. “They learn. You can’t throw everything at them at once, because if you do, they start to acclimate to the changes in their environment.”
The Mayor said they would start with a fence around the pond and possibly along the backside of the walkway nearest the pond. Councilperson Amy Howorth wondered if this would inadvertently also impact the turtles who live in the park.
“Will the turtles be stuck?” she asked.
“There’ll still be plenty of turtles,” Hamilton said. “But, I mean, the turtles also defecate on the concrete.”
The council agreed to use all the options except population control through addling goose eggs.
“I would support all the options we’ve discussed and remove population control until we’ve exhausted all of our measures,” said Councilperson Nina Tarnay.
Councilperson Steve Charelian said he wasn’t “a huge fan of the lasers,” but urged the measures immediately include signage at Polliwog to address “the low hanging fruit,” which is people feeding the geese.
“We’re talking about education,” he said. “We lived through the smoking ban. We’re still living through it. It’s a picture, and it’s ‘No Smoking.’ It’s universal. It’s crossed out, not too much wording. You know, ‘Don’t Feed the Geese.’”
Howorth successfully made a motion that also included staff returning with cost estimates for the different measures.
“I want to assure citizens we’re not talking about appropriating $500,000 here for noisy hawk-shaped drones, but I think we need to move forward with all of this,” she said.
“I also have a big dog who’s happy to go chase them,” she said. ER
