Wild Goose Chase

Mention urban wildlife, and most people think of pigeons and squirrels. They might also think of New York City’s particular oddities - cockroaches, sewer gators, and rats the size of housecats. But in recent years, New York’s neighbor to the west, New Jersey, has been battling a new breed of urban pest - Canada Geese. Fifteen years ago, there were less than 30,000 geese in the state. Today, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, there are nearly 100,000, the highest number per acre in the country. In parks, golf courses, schoolyards, and on private lawns, geese have been nibbling away at grass, honking, defecating, and generally making pests of themselves.

Geese interrupt flight plans at Newark International Airport and chase people around Camden parks. As New Jersey’s Republican representative Jim Saxton put it in 2002, “every citizen in New Jersey who drives past a farmer’s field or pond, or walks through a park or soccer field can see the problem. It’s much worse than five years ago, but it’s not nearly as bad as it will be five years from now if we don’t act soon.”

The congressman did act, and the Canada Goose’s reign of terror may soon end. In August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service passed a law that makes it easier for communities everywhere to manage their goose populations. The new law extends goose-hunting season by one month, allows private citizens to destroy nests and eggs without federal permits, and allows airports to round up and kill geese without permits. New Jersey announced it would like to reduce its goose population to 41,000, meaning it would need to kill more than half its current birds. 

A growing number of New Jersey companies will at least shoo them away. In 1999, Bob Young was out walking his Border Collie, Boomer, when the owner of a nearby golf course asked if Boomer was available to chase away geese. In trade, he offered Young, then a physicians’ assistant, free golf anytime, and now chasing geese off of public and private lawns is Young’s full-time gig. His company, Geese Chasers, in Mount Laurel, employs twelve people and fifteen border collies (including Boomer). “When we get a client, they’ve usually been through the whole gamut - Border Collie cutouts, windmills, Mylar balloons in the water,” he says. “They try floating crocodile heads, but we have pictures of the geese just swimming around and sitting on them.” Young’s employees take collies to sites like city parks and school athletic fields as many as four times a day to chase geese, and they now have clients in seven counties. Alex Tkacenko, who started Lakewood, New Jersey-based Goose Runners three years ago, says people underestimate the goose’s intelligence. The birds are rarely fooled by decoys like plastic owls and snakes, or by boxes that emit coyote howls. He also uses trained Border Collies to chase geese off of people’s lawns, but the geese have learned to anticipate his schedule. “If I showed up every day at 7 a.m., they would know I was coming, so I switch up the routine a bit,” he says. “I usually go twice a day for as long as it takes. It’s all in the geese action.