In this San Francisco Bay Area city the biggest nuisance isn’t traffic or housing prices – it’s geese poop. And it’s about to cost taxpayers nearly $400,000 to get rid of the problem.
Hundreds of Canadian geese have made themselves at home in Foster City, California, leaving behind droppings that foul lagoons, drive up bacteria levels, and sometimes frighten children at local parks, according to city leaders.
City leaders say the problem has gotten so bad that they’re ready to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a plan to drive the birds away.
“If we can find a way to manage this in a way that geese and people can coexist without conflict, that would be a huge success,” Parks and Recreation Director Derek Schweigart told The Washington Post.
“We’ve just gotten to the point where the population has gotten so large that it is overwhelming.”
The plan is set to launch in September, Schweigart said. It will include drones disguised as falcons, using Border Collies to chase them away, and remote-controlled water devices designed to make the geese feel unwelcome.
Foster City, a town of about 33,000, has struggled with geese for years. At times, as many as 400 birds gather in its seven main parks, leaving city crews to spend tens of thousands annually on cleanup and power washing, The Washington Post reported.
There have been previous attempts to solve the problem, including egg addling (coating eggs with oil so they won’t hatch), fencing off areas, and even a controversial 2021 plan to kill more than 100 geese but public backlash forced them to back off.
But nothing worked.
A major factor, experts say, is that Canada geese no longer migrate the way they once did.
“We, collectively as humans, have provided them a great place to hang out and raise young,” said Melanie Weaver, a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “It’s a recipe for disaster.”
This time, Foster City is bringing in Wildlife Innovations Inc. to lead the effort.
“One portion of this is don’t throw everything at them at once,” said Jake Manley, president of the firm. “Don’t put all your cards on the table at once. Every time they start acclimating, throw something new that they haven’t seen.”
The city hopes its latest approach will cut down on both geese and cleaning costs.
“We’ve created this environment,” Schweigart said. “Our goal would be to see measurable decreases, not only in the volume of geese that are present, but more importantly, measure it by the amount of feces that’s reduced.”
