The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has stopped a program that was going to stop the number of geese in the area by capturing and blasting them to death.
In a letter sent to Democratic lawmakers on May 9, M. Scott Bowen, director of the state office, told them about the decision. In April, Sen. Dayna Polehanki (D-Livonia) and 11 other senators sent a letter asking the DNR to think again about the “capture and euthanasia” program. They said it was a “unfair and inhumane” answer to complaints about nuisances, mostly goose droppings.
Residents with the right permits would be able to catch “nuisance Canada geese” and put them down during the species’ inactive time from June 1 to July 1. People who owned land and wanted to do that had to have tried other non-lethal ways to tame the animals first.
The call was made to the Natural Resources Committee and was against the plan to “annually round up potentially 10,000 or more Canada geese and their goslings in their natural habitat during their summer molt (June and July), when they are flightless,” as the writers put it.
The plan was approved on October 10, 2024, and was supposed to start in 2025. It was called the “Canada Goose Program” on the Michigan DNR website. The program’s FAQ page says that it was created to “give private landowners (including businesses and other commercial entities) options to address goose-human conflicts on their sites.” It also says that Canada geese are “typically responsible for most conflicts” and that people are more worried about them now that diseases like the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (or bird flu) are spreading.
Residents would be able to get permits to remove “nuisance” goose nests and eggs, and geese would not have to be moved after they are rounded up. Instead, any captured geese would have to be killed. The “end goal” of the program was to let people pay to have the geese meat processed, tested, and given. In the meantime, the bodies would be thrown away.
The “roundup of Canada geese and their goslings and lethally gassing them inside portable gas chambers,” as lawmakers who were against the program put it, was officially put on hold a week before the May 16 deadline for landowners to apply for the right permits to take part.
Local groups like In Defense of Animals had fought against it in the past. On their website, they told people to write to their representatives and said, “Michiganders have the power to stand up for geese and demand ethical, non-lethal management solutions in their own communities.”
Director: The state still puts non-lethal animal control first.
They said in the letter that they were taking a break that the agency had been “working with the public to resolve human-goose conflicts for over 40 years” and that the pilot program was another step toward that goal.
“After further consideration and consultation with our Wildlife staff, we have decided to pause the program for this year and will not be issuing any permits or conducting this work on any sites,” Bowen wrote. “We will continue to research alternative options for managing human-goose conflicts and health and human safety concerns forareas with overabundant Canada Goose populations.”
The letter said that the government is still putting a high priority on non-lethal methods such as changing the habitat, stopping feeding, scare tactics, repellents, and destroying nests and eggs.
“It is important for the health and safety of our citizens and the management of our natural resources that we continue to use the goose management tools at our disposal,” it said.