'Gander Slander': Activists Protest Madison Parks' Goose Captures

MADISON, WI— Protesters lined up outside the Madison Municipal Building on Friday to stand against the city’s killing of geese at two Madison parks over the summer.

Hosted by animal rights organizations such as Alliance For Animals and In Defense of Animals, the protest aimed to raise awareness about the goose control method and encourage people to think about the need to share the outdoors with wildlife, Mary Telfer, a protester and former executive director of Alliance for Animals, told Patch.

“We need to live with wildlife,” Telfer said. “We need to appreciate the wildlife. Most people are horrified when they find out that's what the city does with the geese.”

Protesters passed out pamphlets and held up signs reading "Stop Gassing Geese!" and "Give Geese a Chance" just off of Capitol Square.

This summer, Madison parks officials employed federal wildlife services to capture 72 geese — 31 at Esther Beach and 41 at Yahara Hills golf course. The geese were then sent to a meat processing facility to be euthanized and processed into food that is then donated to food pantries, according to the Madison parks website.

The geese are killed to reduce population numbers and regulate goose activity within parks, Madison parks spokesperson Ann Shea told Patch.

“We use an extensive integrated wildlife management plan in managing the Canada Goose population in Madison Parks,” Shea said in an email. “We have done so since 2011, when overabundant goose populations and resulting detrimental effects on public safety and environmental and human health were studied and addressed.”

Some of these detrimental effects include damage to park vegetation and beach closures because of increased bacteria levels. The number of Canada geese that migrate to Wisconsin in the summers is on the rise and is monitored by Madison Parks.

This approach, coined “lethal take,” is a last resort, according to the parks website. The city works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Wildlife Services to capture the geese.

Madison parks officials have other control techniques including fencing, putting up predator decoys, oiling the eggs to prevent them from hatching and hazing, which is meant to scare geese away from a specific area.

Telfer argued that killing geese is needlessly cruel and there are more effective techniques — such as hazing. The Alliance bought two $400 strobe lights and donated them to the parks department to help with this process and, she said, hoped it would lead to a no-kill summer.

“It’s a lazy technique, killing them, and it's expensive,” Telfer said.

The "lethal take" method is not new or exclusive to Madison. In 2017 and 2018, a combined 336 geese were rounded up from Madison parks, and 2019 is the only summer since 2011 that no geese were captured.

Telfer hopes the city will work more with organizations such as the Alliance to find alternatives to controlling geese.

“For about four years we've been cleaning up goose poop, trying to discourage the geese by hazing them and helping the parks department,” Telfer said. “We bought two $400 strobe lights to help this year, and they still ended up killing in two different places. I think people need to know exactly what happened and why we're there.”