A flock of Canada geese is causing quite the stink on the Kāpiti Coast. Geoff Amos says locals are sick of the birds fouling up the Awatea Lake in Paraparaumu.
He's launched a petition asking the council to manage the birds - by giving the birds pest status and introducing culling.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
It’s not just the pollution and mess, he says, but the geese are also muscling out other species.
“They are quite an invasive bird, they were introduced for hunting and shooting by our ancestors and they have frankly got out of control.”
The South Island removed the geese from protected status and they are routinely culled, he says, after their population exploded.
Two population centres are of particular concern, Amos says.
“One is Lake Ellesmere and the other, and this came as a bit of a surprise to me, is Lake Wairarapa.
“Unless the country does something with those two main areas to start with we will never get these birds under control.”
In urban areas shooting to control the birds is not an option, he says.
“I’m not looking at total eradication, these birds will never disappear from New Zealand, what there needs to be is a cull to reduce them.”
At Awatea Lake he says it is common for 250 to 300 birds to be present.
“I think ultimately these will completely remove any form of wildlife, let alone their pollution.
“They’ll completely take over, we’ve got some interesting little birds on that pond, the whio, the scaup.”
He advocates for an innovative approach such as used by authorities in Denver, Colorado.
“These birds when they moult they are very placid, and they don’t fly, in Denver in all their ponds once a year they do a little round-up, they build a corral, they quietly move them into the corral, shut the door, take them away from the public arena and euthanise them through a processing system and they feed the meat to the needy.”
