Excuse me, is this goose bothering you?

The Canada goose is a national symbol. Flocks of the black and tan birds with the distinctive white chin strap fly across tourist mugs, classic Canadian art, and across some of BC’s most picturesque beaches. Their awkward adolescent honk is a core feature in our soundscape.

They are also, however, a national nuisance.

The geese used to migrate away from the Island in the winter (and most subspecies still do), but in the past several decades, the largest of the species have made a year-round home in the balmy Pacific region. With few predators, voracious appetites, and an outsized amount of poop—on average, a kilogram per day, per bird—they have outstayed their welcome.

“The time has come to reduce the population of breeding resident Canada geese,” said Jacques Sirois, on behalf of the Friends of Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary.

From threatened to threatening

Their population was helped along by government agencies that deliberately released Canada geese on southern Vancouver Island to establish breeding populations in the mid to late 1900s. It was a misguided attempt to shore up local hunting opportunities and restore the then-threatened geese populations, which had been desperately overhunted. But urban development reduced hunting grounds and simultaneously provided a safe zone for the geese. Over the years the large birds have made themselves at home in farms, sports fields, golf courses, ecological reserves and islands, and sensitive intertidal zones.

Canada geese are supposed to be migratory, but abundant food, few predators, and good weather was enough of an invitation for this subset of the species to become year-round locals. Eagles sometimes eat a goose, but not often since they’re so large. River otters love the eggs, but not enough to manage the whole population.

Already by the 1980s geese were becoming a nuisance, and within the next 10 years they had established nests in “most of southeastern Vancouver Island,” according to the Guardians of Mid-Island Estuaries Society.

Tim Clermont started that society when he was working as a conservation land manager tasked with restoring estuary habitats. He found that his number one opponent was Canada geese, and no one was talking about it.

What first got Clermont’s attention was how the geese would decimate grassy plants in estuaries—which is where juvenile salmon find space to hide out while they get their sealegs.

Salmon are born in freshwater, and salmon babies have to linger in estuaries for four to six weeks while they get used to the salt water. They’re sluggish and small during that transition, and are easy prey. Plant cover is essential to survival.

Canada geese seem to especially love a marsh plant called carex lyngbyei sedge. It’s a critical part of an estuary marsh. The sedge provides nutrients, stabilizes the marsh platform in storms and floods, and gives food and cover to juvenile salmon.

Canada geese rip it out by its rhizomes.

“We're seeing 90% to almost 100% loss in a lot of these estuaries that groups have spent millions trying to protect,” Clermont said. “It's probably impacted the Chinook stocks in the Salish Sea, and then that impacts killer whales. It's a huge thing, and the resident Canada goose is one of the main culprits.”

Jacques Sirois agrees: “Only God knows how many problems the salmon have today. So that's one more issue for salmon. A lot of species of wildlife are affected by this overgrazing and habitat degradation caused by resident Canada geese.”

Not only do geese like ecologically important food, they also eat a lot. Geese don’t digest food efficiently, Clermont says, so they eat extra to make up for it—as much as 10% of their body weight. The average adult resident Canada goose weighs 4.5 kilograms.

Farmers have complained about the geese for years—their spring fields are a target for these birds. They’ll also chew up sporting fields, golf courses, and the odd yard.

What happens after they eat is also a problem.

Sirois spends a lot of time on Trial Islands offshore from Oak Bay, an ecological reserve with a variety of rare and endangered plants. There, he says, the geese are killing plants with their poop.

“These plants evolved to thrive in relatively poor soils. But there’s too much poop. It's about one kilogram of poop per day per adult Canada goose. They dump a lot of poop on the rare plant habitat,” he said. “Technically the plants are over-fertilized.”

CRD is contemplating a goose cull to cut the population down

That’s why Sirois, Clermont, and many others have been addling goose eggs every spring.

They find the nests, open in the ground, and shake the eggs vigorously, killing the gosling without evidence. When the parent goose returns, it doesn’t know anything is wrong. By the time the adult goose realizes the eggs aren’t hatching, it’s too late in the season to lay more.

Addling is widely used by conservationists, but as Sirois says, it only stops the growth for one year. An adult Canada goose will live for 20 to 25 years, and mate with the same partner, easily producing a handful of eggs every year for 20 years.

Regular addling has stabilized the adult geese population at between 10,000 and 15,000 birds across southern Vancouver Island, but more reduction is needed.

That’s why the Capital Regional District (CRD) is looking at introducing a geese cull. With a $250,000 budget, the CRD wants to put deliberate effort into the problem, which until now has been addressed by various groups around the region. It’s a complicated enough problem that a regional approach is needed, said Glenn Harris, the CRDs senior manager of environmental protection.

On top of annual egg addling, CRD staff have recommended a combination of hunting and harvesting adult goose to reduce the population. Harvesting could also be called herding. The geese are flightless every summer for about a month when they molt, so they can easily be herded into a pen and onto trucks.

From there, both Harris and Sirois say they should be used for food. Sirois said there’s already a lot of Canada goose pepperoni being produced up-Island.

CRD directors have two more weeks to register their opposition to the plan, which is under an alternate approval process, where they count nays instead of yays for a vote. If less than 10% are opposed, the project will be approved.

If the plan is approved, Harris wants to coordinate with the First Nations and local conservation groups that are already involved in various ways.

“It's a man-made problem that was caused, and now it's gonna take solutions to bring back a balance, because it's out of whack. There's too many local resident geese. They're not supposed to be here,” Clermont said.