Oiling eggs latest strategy to control goose population in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS - Geese are back out in force around Cedar Rapids, chomping on grass along bike trails, wading in ponds and rivers and waddling across the street.

Emma Adams, 76, of Nauvoo, Ill., travels to Cedar Rapids regularly to care for her terminally ill brother and they enjoy watching the goslings grow bigger and more colorful each time they come back to Robbins Lake.

'They deserve a place on this earth like anyone else,” Adams said. 'Just leave them alone.”

Cedar Rapids' plan for goose control this year and next year could come as welcome news for admirers like Adams and her brother. Cedar Rapids staff say they have identified a new, more humane approach to deal with an old problem: over population of geese.

The new technique involves coating eggs with corn oil and returning them to the nest. The corn oil restricts the flow of oxygen through the shell, suffocating the embryo. Eventually, mother goose will give up on the nest, said Greg Harris, a wildlife depredation biologist for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

'You remove that year's reproduction,” Harris said. 'You are not going to add more geese into the population.”

The Humane Society of the United States, on its website, refers to the oiling method as an example of 'addling” and says, 'The humane way to limit flock growth and stabilize goose populations is to keep eggs from hatching.”

The strategy marks a stark contrast from last year's population control plan, which involved rounding up 446 geese, slaughtering 161 of them and offering the ground-up goose meat to the needy. At this point, city officials are not planning to conduct a 'food pantry operation” this year, said Daniel Gibbins, Cedar Rapids parks superintendent.

'One reason we are looking at not doing the pantry this year is because we looked at that as a last resort for population control,” Gibbins said. 'If you look at what we've done over the years, we'd tried everything except population control. And, it wasn't very many geese. If you have a couple thousand geese in the urban core, a couple hundred geese doesn't have much impact with all the geese coming in and out.”

Over the years the city has used remote control electronic devices, laser beams and dogs to chase off geese, which leave behind droppings, hiss at passers-by when goslings are present, and are viewed by some as a nuisance.

The effectiveness of last year's round up and new legalized urban goose hunting is unclear, but it seems fewer geese are around this spring, Gibbins said.

Gordon Lewis, 60, of Cedar Rapids, was on a stroll Wednesday afternoon near Ellis Park where geese had congregated.

'It seems like there's less around this year,” Lewis said. 'But, we don't mind them. Just slow down for the geese and avoid them.”

While egg oil is the new plan, it's too late in the season to deploy this year, so it won't be rolled out until next year, Gibbins said.

The egg oiling method is regulated, and the eggs can only be oiled at an early stage of development, Harris said. If any eggs in a nest have cracked, even a single peck in the shell, the entire nest is off limits, he said.

Brent Neighbor, Ellis Park supervisor, worked with the Iowa DNR to earn a Nuisance Wildlife Control License, Gibbins and Harris said. The license allows Neighbor to oil eggs, but he still must be accompanied by a licensed member of the Iowa DNR, likely Harris.

'Because of the timeline of gaining the license this spring, we were not able to locate enough nests for the March 15 to April 15 window to conduct egg oiling this spring,” Gibbins said. 'But (we) are working to find nesting areas this year that we will get into next March, flag nests and then return with the DNR to oil.”

Gibbins said the nests are typically buried in the backwater slough of the Cedar River and are difficult to get to, so it's not clear how many nests they will be able to find. The most time consuming portion is locating and flagging the nests, and a license is not needed for that step, Harris and Gibbins said.

The oiling process must be supervised for two seasons before Neighbor could conduct the oiling independently, but Harris still would need to verify the need and grant a permit, Harris said.

The Iowa DNR had conducted an effective egg oiling operation in Cedar Rapids in 2004 and 2005, oiling 1,500 eggs, but that effort was discontinued, Harris said.

Gibbins said a prerequisite of egg oiling is allowing hunting, and it was not legalized in Cedar Rapids city limits until last year.

Last year, Cedar Rapids legalized urban goose hunting for permitted hunters south of Highway 30 and west of Interstate 380. That remains on the table, Gibbins said. Iowa DNR regulates licensing and the waterfowl hunting season, which runs from September to January.

Until then, Cedar Rapids officials may turn to a goose round up and relocation effort, which also has been used in the past, Gibbins said. A decision on that is to be made likely in late May, he said.

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