Annual goose roundup nabs 523 birds

CEDAR RAPIDS - For now, odds have dropped that you'll walk on goose droppings in Cedar Rapids.

With the help of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and some local volunteers, city workers on Thursday morning conducted the annual goose roundup. The relocation exercise has been the city's answer to a chronic overpopulation of geese for more than 15 years.

“We have so many geese where people want to recreate,” said Daniel Gibbins, Cedar Rapids' parks superintendent. “It's a mess everywhere, and it's becoming a safety concern with the geese waste. It's just overpopulation.”

The roundup is akin to a herding operation, with boats in the Cedar River and people on the shore steering the geese into fenced-in areas. Some of the birds also walked easily into trailers, though some had to be picked up and placed inside as the young ones were separated from the adults. The young won't start to fly for about three weeks, and the adults are in the molting process of replacing feathers, so they weren't flying either.

By early afternoon Thursday, Tim Thompson, a DNR wildlife biologist in Iowa City who helped oversee the operation, reported that the roundup had nabbed 523 geese. Most were picked up in the Robbins Lake area at Ellis Park; about 150 were rounded up along First Street NW across the Cedar River from Quaker; and a few dozen more were picked up at two city golf courses and Noelridge Park, he said.

Typically 400 to 500 geese are rounded up a year in Cedar Rapids, so Thursday's total was more than usual, though not a record. One roundup resulted in more than 600 geese being removed, Thompson said.

Of the 523, 243 were goslings that were taken to the Hawkeye Wildlife Area at Coralville Lake, where they will learn to fly. Young female geese tend to remain at the place where they first fly, while males usually settle wherever their mates live, Thompson said.

The adult geese picked up Thursday were being driven to areas as far west as west of Interstate 35 in central Iowa. Even so, some likely will make their way back to Cedar Rapids, said Thompson, who called the annual roundup a stopgap measure, not a long-term remedy.

Thompson has estimated that Cedar Rapids is home to a couple thousand geese, though Gibbins suggested that even more are likely here. Both said the city has more resident geese than usual because of the mild winter, the early spring and the absence of flooding that can destroy nests.

In recent weeks, Gibbins said he may ask the City Council to prohibit the feeding of geese inside the city limits. People like to feed bread scraps to geese, which isn't good for the birds and causes them to congregate in particular areas, he said.

Gibbins also may ask the council to permit the hunting of geese at select spots in the city with close monitoring, and he also plans to use dogs to help drive the birds out of certain areas.

Though cities in Iowa decide if they allow hunting inside their borders, Thompson said the DNR has established a special early hunting season in a Cedar Rapids-Iowa City zone. That September event would allow hunters to thin out the number of resident giant Canada geese before other species fly through this part of Iowa.

Too many geese in a city like Cedar Rapids, Thompson said, does cause sanitary problems.

“Geese are grass-eaters basically,” he said. “When actively feeding, they can defecate every five minutes.”