Subject: URBAN CANADA GOOSE CONTROL
Date: Apr 7 06:49:44 2000
From: WAYNE WEBER - WAYNE_WEBER at bc.sympatico.ca


Kelly and Tweeters,

With all due respect to those who are trying to limit the growth
of shoreline lawns and other grassy areas, my feeling is that it is an
impossible task. The pressures are all toward increasing the acreage
of lawns. For example, during a brief period (about 2 years) when the
former B.C. government changed the rules and allowed golf courses
within the Agricultural Land Reserve, 19 (nineteen) applications were
received for new golf courses in the Vancouver area! Luckily, not all
of them were approved and built before the rules were changed back to
prohibit golf courses. However, as one example, a large golf course
was built along 72nd Street in Delta, next to Boundary Bay. What used
to be rough grassland with huge numbers of voles, and food for lots of
Red-tailed and Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Harriers, and Short-eared
Owls, is now habitat for Canada Geese, Killdeer, Robins, and
Starlings.

The vast expanse of lawns (and pastures) in the Gulf of
Georgia-Puget Sound area is in large measure responsible for the
success of another "alien" to our area-- the European Starling. In
addition to chopping down the forests and creating square miles of
their favorite habitat, we also encouraged Starlings by
(unintentionally) introducing their favorite food-- the leatherjacket
or marsh cranefly (Tipula paludosa), whose larva eats the roots of
grass plants, and makes up 50% or more of the food of Starlings in the
spring in some parts of Britain.

Canada Geese and Starlings are here to stay, folks-- in numbers!

Wayne C. Weber
114-525 Dalgleish Drive
Kamloops, B.C. V2C 6E4
wayne_weber at bc.sympatico.ca


>So, Wayne, are you saying that reducing the amount of lawn will not
be
>successful because it would be too big a job with too much human
resistance
>or are you saying that, even with great reductions in the amount of
lawn,
>the goose population will remain, or perhaps even continue to grow.
>