Honk if you love Canada geese.

Is Over-Familiarity Turning These Birds, Once a Thrilling Sight, Into a Nuisance?

Shortly after six every morning, they show up at Debbie Glascock's back gate in rural Michigan, a gaggle of a dozen or so, honking noisily for their breakfasts. The neighbors call Glascock "Mother Goose," not just because she's fallen into the habit of feeding her resident giant Canada goose population, but also because she leads a small band of activists called Friends of the Ducks and Geese. Glascock is embroiled in the controversy that has erupted across North America over a stunning and unexpected recovery in populations of resident Canada geese. In some areas, state and wildlife officials are trying to reduce numbers by addling (shaking to prevent hatching) eggs, moving goslings to game preserves, or killing adult birds.

But Glascock's group believes human efforts to control the bird populations are actually contributing to the increases. "We've contended that the stress these birds are put under is causing them to have more babies," she says." They're threatened every year by having their babies taken away, and they compensate by having more."

Geese hatch anywhere from five to eight young a year. They're overrunning many urban areas and parks in the U.S. and Canada. Wildlife biologists have taken to calling them "sky carp" - carp being "junk" fish nobody wants. The southeast Michigan population, where Debbie Glascock lives, is estimated at 194,000 birds.

Yet 30 years ago, there were just a few thousand in all of North America. A small sub-population found near Rochester, Minnesota was reintroduced to parts of the U.S. and Canada. Today, there are more than 1.5 million of them. Says Canadian Wildlife Service Population Biologist Katherine Dickson in Hull, Quebec, "We're trying to deal with problems as they arise." But, she adds, wildlife experts are beginning to hope Mother Nature has some magic bullet that will reduce populations, at some point, without human intervention.

In the U.S., urban goose populations, increasing everywhere, are virtually exploding in states east of the Mississippi. In Clarkstown, N.Y., with a human population of 85,000, they've lost patience; years of egg-addling just kept the numbers stable, says Town Supervisor Charles Holbrook, "at around what federal officials say is 1,200, but I think it's more like 2,000."

But while resident geese flourish, some migratory populations are shrinking dramatically. One Atlantic group of migratory birds now has just 29,000 breeding pairs - a 27 percent drop from the year before and a dramatic tumble of 75 percent from 1988 numbers. "There's been some habitat changes in some of the breeding areas, especially in the North," says Massachusetts-based U.S. Fish and Wildlife Biologist George Haas. "The big factor has been the weather; we haven't had any indication of food being an influence. We know that they can be over-harvested."

Hunting of Eastern migratory geese was suspended in the fall of 1995, to try to protect their numbers (though, with proper identification difficult, many are still being shot). The killing of the rapidly-multiplying resident birds, however, has only just begun. Some have dubbed it Operation Goose Bump.

Canada geese are attracted to golf courses and parks by the same factors humans find pleasing: small lakes of open water surrounded by groomed, wide lawns. The birds, once considered charming, have become to many people noisy, fat, nasty things that foul ponds and manicured lawns with large, liquid droppings and shed feathers. And they won't leave. They don't mix with migratory flocks that stop over twice each year on their way north or south. The two populations, genetically identical, refuse to interbreed. "It has something to do with the pair-bonding," says Dickson. "Canada geese mostly mate for life, and they choose mates from their own area."

So while migratory populations are protected from hunters, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has resorted to issuing kill permits on resident flocks. In 1996, the Service issued permits to kill a total of 2,000 birds in Minnesota, 500 in Michigan, and 350 in Clarkstown, New York. "There are high populations of geese throughout that southern New York, Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey area," says Haas.

Haas adds that although the geese are nuisances rather than genuine hazards, there are "some very real human conflicts. We are, in some suburban settings, having property damage to lawns," he says.

The birds, most agree, are not a genuine health hazard or a danger to people. They are simply a major nuisance. Which, to some, is reason enough to get rid of them.

CONTACT: Friends of the Ducks and Geese, 4258 Fenmore, Waterford, MI 48328/[phone]; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 300 Westgate, Center Drive, Hadley, MA 01035-9589/[phone].