A California Bay Area's Idyllic Lagoon Is Fouled By An Unexpected Influx Of Controversial Critters

Foster City, an under-the-radar Bay Area city, has a beloved lagoon where locals like to swim and take their sailboats out on the water. Today, however, you may want to think twice before swimming in it. The lagoon has become the center of a major issue in the community: Canada geese. The city council has been trying to deal with the huge amount of geese in the area for years, but so far, nothing has deterred them from swimming in the lagoon — which is apparently just as appealing to geese as it is to people.

Not everyone sees the presence of these birds as an issue — after all, they are beautiful creatures, and it can be fun to watch them waddling across the grass or bobbing along in the water. While an influx of Canada Geese might not usually make a park one of the best for bird lovers, for those who do get to know them, they can be fascinating. They are social animals and intensely bond with their parents, make friends in their flocks, mate for life, and fiercely protect their young. They even mourn when they lose them.

Unfortunately, having so many geese around makes it a lot more challenging to keep the lagoon and other public spaces, like the city's public parks, clean and safe for their human visitors. It might be hard to believe for anyone who has never spent time in a park where Canada Geese are flocking, but their poop can quickly go from an annoyance to a biohazard. Stepping in goose poop while walking around in a park is certainly annoying, but swimming in a lagoon where there's so much waste that it's seriously impacting the water quality is a safety concern.

The huge boom in the goose population actually started years ago, with as many as 400 geese flooding Foster City's public parks and lagoon. Once, Canada Geese came and went with the seasons, at least offering a temporary reprieve to places like Foster City that have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on cleaning and maintenance when they're around. However, humans and geese seem to like the same things, and public spaces make such good homes for geese that they often decide to simply stick around in them forever.

'To make their lagoon less appealing, city officials have tried all kinds of methods of deterring them. According to a report from CBS, the city is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get the geese to leave, with no success. Foster city has tried spraying massive amounts of bird repellent, destroying their eggs to deter future nesting and prevent new geese from hatching, frightening them with laser beams, and at one time, even planned to kill some of the geese. However, the people of Foster City who love the geese pushed back on the idea of killing them, and it was scrapped.

Going forward, city officials are hoping to redouble their efforts, bringing back old strategies and pairing them with the use of dogs and drones. Over time, they hope to find a way to change the lagoon and public parks so that the geese like it less and, hopefully, they will peacefully decide to leave on their own. Whether or not their plans will work remains to be seen, but for now, those visiting Foster City may want to bring some binoculars to watch the geese instead of a bathing suit.