I’m in Grand Marais this week and noticed this sign along the waterfront park:
DO NOT FEED THE GEESE
Feeding of geese is prohibited
City ordinance number 167
Petty misdemeanor
In August of 2011, the City (TJ!) put up "Do not feed the wildlife" signs along the Sesqui Plaza (blog post here). A month later, I commented that the signs appeared to be making a difference, and now, one year later, it’s still the case. Cool. (See all the Canada geese-related blog posts here on LoGro, going back to 2009.)
What else needs to be done to further control the geese problem, especially in Riverside and Babcock parks?
Hand out free shot gun shells?
The city made a good attempt at fixing the landscaping on the Ames Park side a few years ago to be more tall plants/natives but still has lots of gaps for the geese to get through. My understanding is the geese won’t go in areas where the height and depth of the plants makes it hard for them to tell if predators are near. Maybe we need to move the sidewalk back at Ames Park and make the plantings wider/deeper? Rochester seems to be doing a good job with their lake scaping project to keep out geese. http://www.rochestermn.gov/departments/administration/projects/geesemanagement/geesemanagement.asp
Need to do this around all the city stormwater ponds too so that geese don’t hang out there. Geese like the nice green lawns.
Beth, thanks for that link to Rochester. I’d not seen that.
We have no geese at all around the Hidden Valley Park storm water pond by our house because of the thick buffer of grasses and cattails surrounding it. But I don’t see how the City could do this effectively along the Cannon River in the parks adjacent to downtown: Ames, Riverside, Babcock. The public use of the parks would seem to prevent a large enough buffer, wouldn’t it?
Brenton, yes, a civic event that engages the public to shoot the geese might be huge fun, just like the poodle shoot fundraiser the Northfield Rotary held a few years back.