This year, getting the Christmas goose for holiday dinners might be easier than usual for Madisonians living near Vilas Park. Residents near the public recreation area are getting fed up with the overwhelming population of geese that come to rest on the shores of Lake Wingra each year before migrating south. In order to get rid of these menaces, a report drawn up by city officials to euthanize many of the geese is underway.
Yes, you heard right: In order to solve the problem of these angry, hissing and insistently defecating creatures, Madison residents want to induce a mass killing of Vilas Park's waterfowl.
The Isthmus reported that Vilas was the leader of beach closings in Dane County parks this past season with 43 bacterial-based shutdowns. The origin of these hazardous bacteria is found largely in the form of goose poop, and some city officials propose a solution that gets rid of the direct source of the fecal matter. But is killing dozens of innocent creatures a necessary form of action just to have turd-free beaches? I don't think so.
In April, a similar proposal was made for exterminating geese at Madison's Warner Park near the Dane County Regional Airport. Officials feared that geese getting caught in plane engines would pose a potential threat to air travelers. While the proposal failed, it sparked much debate over the plan's ethical issues and created a forum for many alternative solutions. Among these are training dogs to drive out the geese, installing effigies and using repellents.
When The Cap Times reported the Warner Park issue in April, UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies Ph.D. student Trish O'Kane pointed out that the city is practically asking for geese with the ideal habitat created for them. Geese favor nesting grounds near bodies of water with short-cut grass that goes all the way to the shore. An example of such a location: Vilas Park. O'Kane interviewed neighbors at Warner Park who said there was not a goose problem 30 years ago when the grass was long. Therefore, with this clipped grass being maintained, exterminating the geese provides only a short-term solution. There is nothing stopping more from returning next year, which would result in the needless slaughter of hundreds of geese.
Also, interfering with animal populations throws off a necessary symbiosis in nature. If predator-prey populations become lopsided, it can create even more problems than the one that originally needed to be solved. For instance, the diet of a goose consists of grass, land plants, aquatic plants, insects and small fish. By getting rid of the geese, there is no way to tell how many other populations may erupt and cause new issues of overgrowth, or the extermination of other species.
It isn't always a good idea to use drastic interference with the environment unless absolutely necessary. Impeding on a species habitat presents a fear throwing off nature's delicate balance even further than man already has.
I know geese can be somewhat vicious and annoying. Stepping in their poop on a leisurely walk through the park is undoubtedly shitty. Trust me, after the traumatizing childhood experience of being bitten by both a goose and a flamingo at the Milwaukee Zoo on the same day, I have not become a fan of them either. But geese do not deserve to die for living the way they are biologically suited to live, and for doing so in a habitat that has been tailored to fit their needs.
The alternative methods of driving out these pesky avian creatures haven't even been attempted to see if they are effective. The extermination of a large chunk of a local population of animals should only be a last resort under dire circumstances. The idea to murder the Vilas Park geese seems like a lazy attempt at solving a problem that could turn into an annual ordeal and more of a hassle than it's worth.
The bottom line: Madison should let these animals continue to live and find a more peaceful solution for this poopy situation. If we have learned anything from our elementary years it's that violence is never the answer.
Jaime Brackeen is a sophomore intending to major in journalism. Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
