Wild goose chase in Ozark: Problem geese to soon feed the poor

This story was first published June 15, 2015.

This wild goose chase had a successful ending — unless you're the goose.

At daybreak Monday, Ozark city employees and Missouri Department of Conservation officials rounded up about 60 Canada geese from Finley River Park.

They captured all but three of the resident goose flock. The geese have prompted complaints from park users because of the voluminous piles of poop the birds leave behind on park trails, ball fields and grassy park areas.

Shortly after 6 a.m. a small motorboat slowly pushed the geese down the Finley River, while paddlers in canoes and kayaks blocked their escape. The birds were herded into a netting pen ashore at the park, then placed into a trailer for the next leg of their journey — to a slaughterhouse.

"This is a last resort effort," said James Dixon, MDC's nuisance animal control expert, who directed the goose roundup. "The city tried pyrotechnics to scare them off. They put fencing along the park sidewalks. But when that didn't work, that's when we do a roundup."

About a dozen captured geese were juveniles still covered with downy feathers. Dixon said those would be released at a distant conservation area and hopefully won't return to Finley River Park because they hadn't yet "imprinted" on the park as their permanent home.

And the rest of the birds?

The adults are going to a slaughterhouse in Stansbury, Mo., where they'll be cleaned, plastic wrapped and delivered to The Lord's Warehouse food bank in Albany, MO to feed the poor.

"The city is paying $10 per bird to do it," Dixon said.

The roundup went mostly without a hitch, except for a brief moment of goose panic once the birds were ushered ashore by a flotilla of kayaks. Three geese made a run for it, splashing through the plastic-boat picket line to freedom.

Dixon said this was the fifth goose roundup so far this year in Missouri. The U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted a similar roundup in Ozark 11 years ago, but a new flock became established, in part because people fed the geese — despite signs warning against it.

Some Ozark residents had expressed concerns about the roundup after it was announced that's how the city would deal with the goose problem. But there were no protesters as the roundup quietly took place.

Larry Martin, Ozark public works director, said complaints about goose poop in the park forced the city to take action.

"To have a population of geese this large year round is not natural," Martin said. "We've had complaints of children getting goose poop on their shoes, on children's strollers, and it also washes into the river where in dry years it can cause problems with dissolved oxygen," Martin said.

"It's unfortunate that we had to do this."

Working with MDC, the city plans to create a vegetation barrier along the river that will deter any new geese that arrive from stepping ashore. Martin said a family of foxes used to live near the Finley River bridge and killed a goose a week, a natural way to keep the goose numbers down.

"But the foxes got flooded out four or five years ago, and since then the geese have not had any natural predation," Martin said.

The few early morning visitors to Finley Park Monday were mostly unaware that the geese were being corralled.

But Ozark resident Andrew Presnell, a youth camp counselor who was setting up for a day camp, said he started hearing about the serious goose problem last summer.

"I can see that it's a good thing to remove them," Presnell said. "We're out here with kids running around in the grass and kids worried about getting goose poop on their shoes."