Each winter tens of thousands of white snow geese descend upon western Richmond. With a cacophony of honking, they root through local schoolyards and parks leaving the areas devoid of vegetation but full of mud and feces.
The increasing population has long-time Richmond Coun. Harold Steves calling for a cull of the waterfowl. While he supports a new program to train volunteers and their dogs to chase geese away from public lands, he said it won't do much more than move the birds from one field to another.
Steves originally called for the cull 10 years ago, before the geese moved inland from Sturgeon Banks, the 8,700-hectare estuary to the west of Richmond.
At the time, he said, he was roundly criticized for supporting killing the birds.
"I have a report from 1972 when there were 20,000 snow geese in the Fraser River estuary," he said. "When I was calling for the cull there were 80,000 snow geese. Last year, there were 100,000."
This year, he predicted, there could be as many as 120,000.
Richmond is planning to train a limited number of volunteers and their medium-to large-sized dogs to harass geese starting this month and continuing to April.
Volunteers will be trained professionally, assigned to a specific park or field, and given an identifying vest to wear.
They will work at their convenience from 4 p.m. to dusk Monday to Friday and 9 a.m. to dusk on weekends.
Steves said part of the reason for the increasing number of geese has to do with global warming.
With more snow melting earlier on the birds' summer nesting area on Wrangel Island, a Russian territory in the Arctic Ocean, the geese have used the expanding breeding ground to produce more offspring.
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