Dogs, guns among options to reduce geese in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS - The shelties and the shotguns may be called in to help, too.

Daniel Gibbins, the city's parks superintendent, on Thursday said the “overpopulation” of geese in the city has grown so large and the feces left behind so unsanitary and offensive that the city is contemplating a new ordinance to make it illegal to feed waterfowl.

Gibbins said he also is studying the possibility of asking the City Council to permit goose hunting in the city much like the city now allows the hunting of deer.

More immediately, though, he is thinking of lining up a herd of local sheltie sheepdogs, which he said can be effective in moving geese out of particular, well-used public spots. The shelties don't reduce the geese population, but can help to move it to places the public uses less. A large number of geese now occupy Robbins Lake in Ellis Park and the park around the Tree of Five Seasons, and shelties might help there before the large number of RAGBRAI bicyclists arrive in the city on July 26, he said.

Gibbins talked to the city's River Recreation Commission on Thursday about the prospect of a new city geese ordinance, and commission member Jeff McLaud said he favors making it illegal to feed geese and other waterfowl in the city.

Gibbins said he hoped to have recommendations in place for the City Council by the end of summer, which he said would likely include fines for feeding.

For now, he is asking people not to feed geese.

“Bread is very unhealthy for geese and waterfowl - it's not something they normally eat,” Gibbins said. “So people really aren't helping the geese even though the geese love it.”

Gibbins said the cities that fine people for feeding waterfowl reportedly have had success in reducing the congregation of geese in certain spots.

As for a goose hunt inside the city, he noted that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources permits the hunting of geese inside cities, though Cedar Rapids' city ordinance does not. A city hunt would not come before plenty of public input, he said, and any hunt likely would share similarities with city's deer hunt, he added.

“You'd allow people to sign up, train them and pick areas that would not interfere or be dangerous to the public,” Gibbins said.

The city also will be conducting its annual geese roundup later this month with the help of the DNR and volunteers, an exercise that removes a certain number of adults and goslings and moves them to bodies of water some distance from Cedar Rapids. The exercise has limited impact on Cedar Rapids' overpopulation of geese, Gibbins said.

Tim Thompson, a wildlife biologist with the DNR in Iowa City, said sufficiently thick are the geese numbers in certain parks in Cedar Rapids that they create “an unsanitary mess to use those areas.”

Cedar Rapids is not alone. He noted that the DNR has established three urban goose hunting zones, a Cedar Rapids-Iowa City zone, one in the Des Moines metro area and another in Waterloo and Cedar Falls. Goose hunters can hunt in the urban zones - which include the areas between cities in the zone and in cities that permit goose hunting - in the first two weeks of September before the regular good hunting season starts statewide, he said.

Hunting in the urban zones is intended to reduce the giant Canada geese population, which is the species that settles in the zones, before migratory species pass through the state, Thompson explained.

The DNR has worked with the city of Cedar Rapids for years on geese issues, and Thompson said the DNR crafted a geese-control plan for the city several years ago. Among the recommendations was the city ban the feeding of geese and that the city plant vegetation around or along bodies of water, which cuts down the sight lines for geese and makes them feel unsafe. The city is trying this in Noelridge Park.

Thompson estimated that the number of giant Canada geese in Cedar Rapids might be 1,500 to 2,000, though he said about 10,000 geese were estimated to be in the city during a January 2012 count. The warm winter kept many migratory geese in the city that otherwise would have flown farther south, he said.

“They don't want to go to Florida or Arizona like people do if they can get what they need here,” Thompson said.