Northern Bruce Peninsula is planning on using birds of prey to deter Canadian Geese from the Lion’s Head waterfront.
Council approved awarding a $9,000 contract to Imperial Falconry Services Inc. during a meeting on Oct. 15 to use various predatory birds as a way of keeping the waterfront area clear.
This comes as the number of Canadian Geese settling along the harbour and waterfront has grown in recent years.
A report from Parks and Facilities Manager Mark Coleman says, “Fouling of lawn, beach, water and parking areas by geese excrement has been a health and esthetics issue for public users of our facilities.”
Coleman says intense cleaning measures have been employed by the municipality to clean up after the geese.
While Northern Bruce Peninsula has attempted a number of geese deterrence measures like shoreline vegetation barriers, fencing, owl and coyote decoys, and dog patrols, the municipality has had limited success in encouraging the geese to move somewhere else.
As an alternative measure to deter geese, staff have reached out to Imperial Falconry Services, which is located near Alvanley, to mitigate the presence of the birds.
“Rooted in the ancient tradition of falconry, their approach represents the ethical pursuit of managing wildlife in manmade environments without causing harm to wildlife,” says Coleman. “Falconry-based abatement harnesses the innate instincts of trained birds of prey (or falconry birds), such has Harris’s hawks, to serve as natural deterrents for all species of nuisance birds.”
The predator birds under Imperial Falconry Services would be able to put the geese in a high-stress situation and encourage them to seek out a more hospitable area.
Imperial Falconry Services was recently hired by the Town of Saugeen Shores as part of a pilot to deter geese around the Port Elgin harbour area.
Coleman says he does not know how the pilot in Port Elgin went, but says other clients have used these services and it typically runs on two to three year program.
“The results are tracked and monitored each year in terms of the decline and the number of geese on-site, or the number of hours required for deterrence,” says Coleman. “The vendor is suggesting a reduced service each year from the initial year and they do keep records and they have shown that the geese do change their behaviour in terms of their flight patterns where they start to avoid areas.”
