The Oswego State campus is home to plenty of Canada geese, becoming perhaps one of the most prevalent features on campus. Especially in the fall semester, geese can be seen in almost every area of campus, in large flocks, leaving their droppings on athletic fields and walkways.
At some upstate New York colleges, the problem has grown to such a degree that the schools now pay to have border collies chase the geese off campus. University at Buffalo has hired a company to bring dogs to its campus regularly to keep the geese away, and SUNY New Paltz has purchased their own dog for the purpose of keeping geese off campus, for the cost of $5,500.
According to Daniel Baldassarre, a professor of Biology at Oswego State who studies birds, that method is the best nonlethal method of managing a goose population.
“Really, the best thing to do is to shoot them,” Baldassarre said. “That is a very real, ethical and scientific way to manage geese populations.”
Geese are not just a nuisance where they are prevalent. Baldassarre said that they can also pose a serious ecological threat. When goose droppings run off into bodies of water, they can cause something called eutrophication, where the nutrient cycle of an aquatic environment is knocked off balance. That can lead to things like algal blooms, overgrowth of different plant species and can kill an environment. Geese are also notoriously territorial when nesting or protecting their goslings.
Baldassarre said that the geese on the Oswego State campus are unlikely to nest in the immediate area, and likely fly to nearby wetlands to nest during the mating season.
At Oswego State, senior grounds worker Scott Stuart said that the campus does not have to do very much by way of cleaning up after the geese.
“We don’t really do too much,” Stuart said. “If there’s an event for the president, or something really big, we will run a power sweeper to clean up the walkways,”
Stuart said that the geese tend to congregate around the Glimmerglass Lagoon, in his experience. About 20 years ago, the campus tried to scare the geese away from the lagoon by installing floating plastic alligators. However, Stuart said that the alligator floats either sank or were stolen by students within the year and were never replaced.
Stuart said that he has not seen any environmental issues in the lagoon as a result of goose dropping runoff, and the geese are more of a nuisance than a legitimate issue around campus.
The geese on the Oswego State campus are likely a mix of migratory and non-migratory flocks of Canada geese, according to Baldassarre. Further south of Oswego, much of the goose populations are sticking around throughout the year, while further north, the birds are likely migrating down from the Canadian arctic, where they have spent the breeding season. Those birds will stay in the area from late fall until early spring.
When it comes to population management, Baldassarre said that different methods yield varying results, and choosing a path forward is basically a cost/benefit calculation. If an institution is spending a lot on cleanup, or if the birds pose a safety threat as they do at airports, then developing a way to keep them off the property makes sense. However, methods like scaring the geese away with dogs have limited utility, and they are more likely to make the geese someone else’s problem as opposed to breaking the flock up.
“You may chase them off for the day, but they may come back the next,” Baldassarre said. “If you only have the dog once a week, then it may not make any difference at all.”
At Oswego State, it would appear that the geese do not pose enough of a problem for the administration to need to take action. University Police Chief John Rossi said that the only time he remembers his officers having to deal with a goose directly was when one got tangled in fishing line by Tyler Hall. The officers freed the goose and it flew away, according to Rossi.
Photo by Colin Hawkins | The Oswegonian
