OAKLAND COUNTY, Mich. – After 50 years of removing and relocating Canada geese from communities around Michigan, the state is changing course.
A new policy quietly began at the end of summer to euthanize any geese that need to be removed.
If a Canada goose needs to be removed from a water source, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources is no longer taking them to a new home. The department said it has no choice but to kill them now.
Roughly 80 years ago, Canada geese were nearly extinct in Michigan -- now they number more than 300,000. It’s causing more conflicts with people.
“Their population can grow -- there’s no natural predators,” said Andy Sarkisian. “Particularly if you have islands on your lake where foxes and raccoons can’t get to their nests.”
Sarkisian lives on Lake Sherwood in Commerce Township, where the geese population exploded this summer.
“We had beach closures because of the E. coli issues,” Sarkisian said. “That population created 4-5 tons of fecal matter into the lake causing a health issue.”
Lake Sherwood did what many other lake associations have done in recent years and rounded up the geese.
“The round-up was a last-ditch resort for us. We did what we could to dissuade them -- whether it was strobing lights, banners, goose lines, barrier zones, nest destruction -- and still the population grew way too large,” Sarkisian said.
In June, a team from Goose Busters was brought in to handle the round-up.
Larry Carsell, a retired Vietnam veteran who now rescues waterfowl, watched as the geese were rounded up.
“People can be pretty cruel,” Carsell said. “They pushed one group of dozen or so, went back out, got another big group of 80 or so and they brought those up and separated them from the moms and dads and they’re all honking and everything throwing them in the trailer. You can tell they’re upset -- they have feelings -- people don’t realize it but they do.”
Since 1972, the DNR has taken geese and relocated them, but Carsell and other waterfowl advocates got wind that this time would be different, so he followed them to a separate location.
“You could see the workers setting something up to put the geese in and I finally got out and talked to them and the DNR guy said ‘Yes, we are gassing these geese,’” Carsell recalled.
The DNR said it‘s a humane way to handle the geese, but Carsell doesn’t agree.
“That’s a cop-out. Geese can hold their breath for a long time. They go underwater for a long time. That carbon dioxide burns their throat and lungs and they suffer for like half an hour because they can hold their breath so much,” Carsell said. “There’s a lot of other things you can do than round them up and kill them all.”
Killing waterfowl isn’t new for the DNR. Mute swans are often killed, sometimes shot, but unlike mute swans, Canada geese are not an invasive species.
Barbara Avers, a waterfowl and wetlands specialist with the DNR, said they ran out of suitable habitats to relocate them to. She said there are several other reasons geese are being euthanized -- including the fact they won’t stay in the new habitats.
“The biggest reason, and the most concerning, is that a few years ago, we had a strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza that showed up in North America, and that was something that was circulating when that happened,” Avers said. “We did cancel all of the relocation activity because we didn’t want to potentially be spreading that virus throughout the state.”
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Carsell believes that if Michiganders knew what was happening to the geese, they would be doing more.
Goose Busters removed the geese, but they did not handle the euthanization. An official with the company said they‘ve never killed a single goose and that they’ve stopped working with the state over the new policy, which is dramatically impacting business.
The DNR says it will donate the meat from geese that are euthanized to local food banks and food pantries.
You can read the Michigan DNR’s full policy below: