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Community Corner

Why The Howard County Geese Won't Fly North

They are in 'heaven' in their giant refuge with few predators in Maryland, experts said.

They’ve tried chasing them with dogs, tricking them with decoys and even blasting them with bright laser beams.

And yet the fact remains:

Canada geese, the charming, honking creatures that produce a pound of waste each day, are a major problem for park managers in Maryland and a particular annoyance in Columbia, where manmade lakes and paths create a lovely habitat for many creatures, whether web-footed or not.

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“They leave poop all over the trails,” said Eric Sharkazy of Columbia. “It’s a mess.”

About 70,000 geese stayed put in Maryland a decade ago, said Larry Hindman, Waterfowl Project Leader for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR), whose office conducts annual surveys of waterfowl.

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That number has remained relatively stable since then, said Hindman.

DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have set the acceptable resident geese population for Maryland at about 30,000, he said.

Kevin Sullivan, a wildlife biologist and Maryland director of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) said the birds, in addition to gobbling up vegetation along lake shores, produce about a pound of waste a day.

The waste leads to increased levels of nutrients getting washed into the lakes, impacting water quality, he said.

The geese stay, because there are few predators and limited hunting, he said.

“Really what you find is a gigantic refuge for them,” he said. “They’ve gone to heaven.”

 officials are among those statewide trying to nudge the geese elsewhere.

Last month, the Columbia Association installed lights in Lake Kittamaquandi. The lights sit on black pedestals just above the surface like channel markers and resemble airport runway lights at night.

The geese enter the water and the lights are designed to hinder them from finding a comfortable place to sleep, said John McCoy, the Columbia Association’s watershed manager.

In Columbia, the geese have been a problem for years, said McCoy.

They eat vegetation along lakeshores that was planted to stabilize soils and keep large amounts of sediment from washing into the lakes.

Without that vegetation, the problem could eventually lead to more costly , he said.

“We want our sediment going the other way,” he said.

In the past, the CA has used dogs to chase away the geese, and that strategy was successful in removing large numbers of geese from the lakes, but the remaining geese will require the lights, he explained.

Staff at  in Ellicott City have tried high-powered laser beams to get the geese to leave, said park operations supervisor and manager, Steven Schwarzman.

Shwarzman said by flashing light beams at the geese, it confuses them, and as a result they don't feel safe and leave the area. This method is similar to hanging brightly colored streamers or strips of Mylar in areas the birds frequent. 

Park staff have also coated goose eggs in vegetable oil, a technique called  “egg addling,” which prevents the embryo inside from developing. 

The most effective means at Centennial, according to Schwarzman, are dead goose decoys. If placed in certain areas they work well, but they have to be constantly rotated, he said.

The geese in Columbia are not, however, a universal annoyance.

In fact, some people quite like them.

William Ryan, who said he visits Lake Elkhorn daily, finds the birds visually appealing.

“It makes the area look nice,” he said. “I like seeing them landing on the lake like a fleet of planes coming in.”

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