150 geese were a ‘nuisance’ in this Kansas City suburb. So homeowners had them killed
The summer days have turned quieter — all too quiet for some — at Lake Waukomis, the tiny waterside town just north of Kansas City. And there is a honking good explanation:
All their geese are dead.
OK, not all. There’s still about 30 left. But in June, 150 Canada geese — deemed by the lake’s homeowners association to have become a growing nuisance and health concern to the hamlet’s 1,000 residents — were corralled during a massive “goose roundup.” Funneled into a truck, they were later hauled off to a processing plant where their meat would be donated to food banks.
Although Canada geese are federally protected, the roundup was perfectly legal, conducted by permit and sanctioned as a management tool of last resort by the Missouri Department of Conservation. The Waukomis roundup, the department said, is the largest of five similar efforts this year in the Kansas City area.
Some Waukomis residents have expressed outrage that so many geese were removed and killed.
“It’s just like if I go buy a beach house. Why don’t I buy a shotgun and shoot all the seagulls?” said Michael Riney, a 15-year-resident whose home sits along the north side of the 90-acre lake. “There are people here who are just freaked out about one piece of goose poop on their grass.
“I would describe it as absolutely brutal. I just don’t understand why you move to the lake if you don’t like geese and birds and deer or anything else. Why do you live here?”
As rare as it is now to find Canada geese on the lake, it may be even harder to find residents upset that they’re gone. The issue is not that they don’t like geese, they said. But they don’t like goose poop.
The prime complaint is that the gaggle of 150 geese created countless piles of green manure (the color, by the way, comes from the grass they eat) mounding up on lawns and boats and, in some cases, encrusting entire docks. One adult goose, on average, can eat four pounds of grass per day, which turns into three pounds of feces.
“I’ve always known they were a nuisance. They just poo everywhere,” said resident Cindy Pounds. “Why would I want to swim in a lake with all that? They just make a huge mess on the docks.”
Goose droppings are packed with E. coli bacteria, which is not harmful in small amounts, but can be in high concentrations, leading to diarrhea, cramps and vomiting.
“Everything they defecate is E. coli,” said Joe DeBold, the state Department of Conservation’s wildlife damage biologist for 21 surrounding counties. “When you consider that they spend at least 70% of their time on the water you can imagine how much goes in the water itself.”
Through mating, “one pair of Canada geese can become more than 50 birds in as little as five years,” the conservation department notes. DeBold said the department, authorized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will issue a permit for what it calls “capture and euthanasia” only as a last resort, after all other methods of controlling a growing goose population have failed.
Lake Waukomis resident Clarence Matthews said neighbors tried laser pointers and dogs to chase the geese away. “You chase them out of your yard, they come back,” he said.
People modify their lawns, keeping the grass long. Geese like it short.
Matthews coordinates the homeowners association’s egg addling effort, which involves finding and oiling the shells of recently laid goose eggs. It is lethal and also requires a permit. The oil prevents the developing embryo from getting oxygen.
Once a gosling is born, “it imprints on that location,” DeBold said. “Where they’re being hatched is where they’re imprinting. So they’re coming back at sexual maturity to do the same thing. And that’s why these populations in isolated locations continue to grow and grow.”
Besides reducing the population, addling the eggs also sometimes prompts the adult geese to move on, having judged the area to be poor for having goslings.
“I’ve addled the eggs for like six years,” Matthews said. In the last two years alone, he said, “we did a little over 100 eggs a year.”
It helped greatly, but still the population grew.
“Then in the fall, when the weather’s changing, it’s getting colder, the geese are coming in, we had what we call bangers,” he said. “They were like a starting pistol — shot a firecracker out of the end, and get the migratory ones to not choose to stay. The population grew anyway.”
Lake Waukomis, in Platte County, is owned by the municipality but managed by the homeowners association. With the goose population growing, Matthews said, residents approached the association’s conservation committee. Its board approved hiring a company, Wildlife Damage Solutions, which obtained the conservation permit.
The geese are rounded up in June or July, during molting season when the geese can’t fly.
DeBold said he approved four other permits for capture and euthanasia in the Kansas City area this summer. They were for Jackson County Parks and Recreation, Belton Parks and Recreation, Oceans of Fun and The Ridge of Blue Springs.
“Those are the ones that got approved this year,” DeBold said. “Next, it could be one. It could be three It could be none.”
None were as large as the roundup at Lake Waukomis this summer. Although even it pales in comparison to past roundups including one less than a decade ago along Brush Creek, he said, when 1,000 Canada geese were removed over a two-year period: 500 one year then 500 the next.
Even after a roundup, once geese find a body of water they like, others will make it their home. It’s inevitable the population will grow again, although it sometimes takes years.
For a short time, a video of the roundup appeared on a Lake Waukomis social media page, but was taken down, having drawn critical comments.
Residents Jen and Tony Soliz judged that many, if not most, of people who criticized the roundup don’t live on the lake or have to put up with the mess and possible health hazards.
“There’s a gentleman,” Jen Soliz said of a resident with a lung disease, “the geese were so bad, he couldn’t even go outside.”
Besides E. coli, the fecal matter can carry parasites and pathogens, and fungal spores that, with overexposure, lead to lung conditions such as histoplasmosis. The geese can also be aggressive to people. She has grandchildren.
“People, the naysayers, like a lot of things, they don’t know all the cons,” she said.
Riney, a neighbor, is among the naysayers.
“Everybody just hates them,” he said of the geese. “I would understand it if it is a health problem. It is crazy. We just don’t have that many geese.”
Now that’s true.
