Geese droppings soil Prescott Park's pristine lawns. 'Unpleasant to say the least'

PORTSMOUTH — The city’s popular Prescott Park — which sits on the banks of the Piscataqua River — is now home to a flock of Canada geese, which are soiling the pristine grounds with their droppings.

Peter Rice, the city's public works director, acknowledged, “We’ve been dealing with this issue for a long time."

City staff have been working to drive the geese out of the park — and stop them from fouling the large grass areas and walkways — for “at least three years,” Rice said.

Geese are persistent

“You can chase them off but they just keep coming back,” Rice said in an interview this week. “We continue to explore options about how to deal with this but it’s very difficult.”

City staff understand why residents and out-of-town visitors to Prescott Park are dismayed by the geese and their droppings.

The park is also home to the Prescott Park Arts Festival, which presents plays and concerts on the park stage all summer.

“We know this is an ongoing challenge. It’s an annoyance when people are trying to enjoy the park and there’s geese feces on the ground,” Rice said.

The issue came again to the attention of city officials this week when a resident sent an email about the problem to the City Council.

Resident raises health hazard concerns

Kristin Logue told the City Council that the “geese at Prescott Park have become more than a cool thing to see.”

“They are a health hazard. Bird droppings are abundant where children play, people place their blankets for shows and where people walk,” she said in an email to the council. “When my son was young the pigeons played in the water pools, and it was easy to say don't go there.” She wrote geese and their droppings have been an issue for other communities, and she believes that geese hate dogs.

“Maybe letting people walk their dogs leashed at the park would help. I am not a dog owner but just a suggestion,” she said.

What city health officer has to say

Health officer Kim McNamara said the city's staff have had “a lot of discussions about this.”

“We live in a natural environment and Canada geese are part of our natural environment,” she said during an interview Thursday. “We completely understand the concerns about droppings. They’re unpleasant to say the least.”

Staff has reached out to both representatives of New Hampshire Fish and Game and USDA Wildlife Services about the issue, McNamara said.

“What we have learned is they do carry bacteria, parasites and viruses that can be transmitted to other birds and waterfowl,” she said. “It’s not known if they can transmit to humans.”

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Exposure to geese and their droppings can also lead to a risk of e coli for other birds, McNamara said, but again “there’s an unclear risk of transmission to humans.”

“You would of course never want people to be near something like that when they’re eating,” she said.

She advised people who see geese droppings when they visit the park to move to another area, rather than simply laying a blanket down.

“I’d never call anything like that safe, even though there’s thought to be a low risk of transmission to humans,” she said about just covering the droppings. “You never want to take any chances, particularly with kids and hand-to-mouth activity.”

Geese can also be aggressive toward humans, McNamara said, but that is typically “when they lay their eggs in early spring.”

It's not surprising that the geese have made a home at Prescott Park, she said.

“It’s a very inviting habitat,” McNamara said. “They like open space beside water.”

Mayor hearing complaints about geese, too

Mayor Deaglan McEachern said he has noticed both the presence of geese in the park, and also their droppings.

And sometimes when he jogs by the geese in the morning, “they hiss at me,” McEachern said.

In terms of geese droppings, the mayor acknowledged “as a father to a couple of young girls, it’s definitely something you notice.”

“I don’t know if it’s worse this year than in years past,” McEachern said, adding he knows it’s been a problem for at least a few years.

“With that great green space, and less green space out there, it’s going to be an inviting spot for residents, tourists and unfortunately geese as well,” McEachern said.

The mayor said he saw the email about the issue, and also reported that “people have reached out to me to tell me it’s a problem.”

“They want me to do something, and we’ll see if there’s more that we can do,” he said.

Portsmouth seeking humane solutions

In 2018, the Pease Development Authority passed a wildlife management plan to protect airplanes from bird strikes at the Portsmouth International Airport at Pease.

The plan included killing wildlife if necessary, after a turkey hit an engine of a KC-135 tanker as it was landing, and destroyed it.

McEachern — and McNamara — stressed repeatedly the city is looking for humane solutions to the geese problem.

“I don’t think we’re at the point where we’re going to be shooting the geese. If the geese are eroding people’s quality of life, I want to make sure we can respond to it in a thoughtful manner,” McEachern said. “We don’t want to shoot them, we would like them to poop somewhere else.”

He emphasized that despite the issue, “everybody loves Prescott Park because it feels like you’re in nature on the water.”

“It’s probably the best place in América,” he added. “It’s really tough to imagine a better place where you can go and it doesn’t cost a penny.”

Festival working with city

City Councilor John Tabor is also the chairman of the arts festival’s Board of Directors and is aware of the problem.

“The festival and the city are both working every way they can to keep them out of the park in as humane a way as we can,” Tabor said Thursday.

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He added that he’s “not aware of any elevated levels of complaints” from festival goers about the geese.

In fact, he said, the problem is “worse when there’s not a show.”

“By having a show we’re keeping them from landing,” he said.

Tabor also credited city and festival staff for continuing to work to try to address the problem.

No easy solutions

City staff “truly understand the concerns” brought up by people about geese in the park, Rice said.

“They are pervasive, and they are tenacious,” he said. “They keep coming back.”

In 2020, the city announced it would use guns firing blanks to scare off geese. In 2021, Portsmouth turned to fireworks to create noise to scare geese.

The city has considered multiple techniques to drive off the geese this year, including “noise devices which set off occasional booms,” Rice said.

But such a device would “obviously be concerning for abutters,” he said. “That’s not something we’re really interested in at this point."

City staff has “explored a number of things” to address the issue and “talked to a number of communities,” Rice said.

“There’s not a consensus of what works,” he added.

Will the geese fly away?

City staff believe the geese at Prescott Park are migratory, McNamara said.

If that’s true, she said, they likely will be “congregating for a very short period,” she said.

“They will probably solve their own issues,” she said.

McEachern acknowledged “it’s a difficult problem to solve.”

“We can increase our efforts and we will do that,” he pledged.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Geese droppings soil Prescott Park: Portsmouth NH seeks solutions