At 11:55 AM 5/6/99 -0700, Ruth Taylor wrote:

While I agree
>that lawns are probably a bad thing, it's going to take years to educate
>people on that issue.

Oh my goodness! I wanted to start discussion about the environemntal impact
of lawns and I see I have succeeded! Thanks to all who replied for helping
along the education process. I hope you are all also crafting your letters
to Wildlife Services.


>At 11:56 PM 5/5/99 PDT, Ed Newbold wrote:
>>I wanted to respond to Kelly Mcallister's basically rational question,
what is
>>wrong with culling the goose herd?

snip
>> I believe the appeal of lawns has to be broken or it will ultimately
>>destroy the world.

Lawns and tigers and bears! Oh my! Lawns and tigers and bears! Oh my!

I truly have sympathy for our wildlife managers who must make these
decisions that are bound to anger some group or other. I personally have
nothing against killing off some geese and feeding them to people. I'm not
sure how effective it will be as a population control measure if we don't
do something about lawns. The same logic applies: if it is reasonable to
kill off geese to keep them at some population level that suits our sense
of park aesthetics, it is certainly reasonable to kill off lawns to achieve
the same end.


Eric Stahlfeld wrote:

>Everything should have its place. Canadas in Montlake, wonderful. Canadas
>causing a health hazard, no.


Excuse me if I am extremely cynical about this health hazard nonsense. I
say this as someone who learned what swimmer's itch is by swimming in the
lagoons around Marsh Island. It was unpleasant, it was over in about 12
hrs, it was educational and it has never been a problem for me swimming in
the main body of Lake Washington. I've never heard of anyone actually
catching anything else from geese, but maybe some of you can enlighten me.
While there is some health risk from large populations of ducks and geese,
but I do not believe it would be enough to invoke calls for death sentences
if geese did not defecate on lawns, which is what people really object to.
Other reasons given are rationalizations, in my cynical estimation of the
public's complaints. Although I have no quarrel with killing off geese as a
management tactic, I have to agree with the local Humane Society's
spokesperson that shitting on lawns doesn't seem to me to be a very sound
reason for killing things (except maybe the lawns). If the geese were a
threat to other wildlife (maybe they are, but Kelly's mention of "algal
blooms/fish kills" is the first time that I have heard this argument raised
about the "goose problem"), I would feel a lot more justified in offing them.


Ed Schulz wrote:

>Roger Woodruff of Wildlife Services estimates that there are
>20,000-25,000 geese in urban areas around Puget Sound, and
>expects the
>number to quadruple in ten years.

>(snip) I was wondering what others who might have more
>experience with counts in the Puget Sound area think of this.

I hope someone has an answer for Ed's question. From the PI article, I
would expect that the numbers of geese have quadrupled or more in the 15
years I've lived here. I don't count geese, but my impression is that there
were a lot of geese 15 years ago and there are a lot of geese now. If
anything, I notice them less in recent years. This may partly be due to the
fact that I don't hang out on the UW campus anymore, which seemed to be one
of the most affected areas. Personally I love watching the geese - there
aren't too many for my tastes - but I recognize the need for some kind of
management.

Kelly McAllister wrote:

>People generally don't raise an
>eyebrow about killing gophers, despite their being native and in severe
>decline.

This seems extremely unfortunate. My eyebrows are raised.
To bring a western Oregon example into the conversation, my ex-in-laws
were quick to respond to moles in their yard with extermination procedures,
rather than by showing the kids what cool and interesting animals were
living in their yard. After all, the moles were disrupting (God forbid!)
the lawn!


The "goose problem" is only one aspect of the impact of lawns, yet not a
single "person-on-the-street" that I've talked to about geese has had any
idea that lawns are even part of the equation. It is not too soon to start
the education/discussion about the role of lawns in our environment.
Thanks to all of you for your input.

Paul Talbert