Valley’s Habitat Loss Keeps Canada Geese From Settling Down : Though many regions are overrun with the fowl that has discarded its traditional migration cycle, its local population has declined in recent years.

Los Angeles, maligned far and wide for its smog and its earthquakes, its congested freeways and smoggy suburbs, still has a lot going for it. After a rain, from a vantage point in the Santa Susana Mountains, you can see the ocean and the Downtown skyscrapers. To the east are the San Gabriels, with the snowy peak of Mt. Baldy sparkling in the sun. For many of us, it is this opportunity to escape to the beach and the forests that makes living here worthwhile.

The annual return of the Canada geese to the city is part of that yearning for a touch of wildness that can stir the soul. Not only bird watchers and nature lovers respond to the geese. People who ordinarily show little interest in birds are fascinated when a V-shaped formation 100 strong flies over in full cry.

To watch a flock approach a feeding area from 1,000 feet, circle warily as they descend and then land gracefully in the grass, can be an exhilarating experience. They are beautiful, stately creatures. A cluster of them swimming buoyantly on a pond is a picture of elegance. The mountains of the San Fernando Valley are a magnificent setting for these migrants from the north as they arrive every fall.

Now it’s true that many U.S. cities and towns would be happy to present Los Angeles with a gift package of their geese. They are up to here in geese. In an era when most wild bird populations are falling alarmingly, Canada geese are booming. The goose population on the Atlantic Flyway has tripled in the past 45 years. Why has this become such a problem for New England, the Midwest and even Seattle?

Escaping the rigors of winter in northern regions of the continent where they nest, the geese are seeking food, bringing their new families with them. Before the recent population explosion, they were welcome. They were proper guests who arrived in the fall and departed in the spring. As their numbers increased, they became more noticeable and people began to feed them like pets. For some of the guests this was almost too good to be true, and they decided to stay--permanently.

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No longer responding to their ancestral migratory program, these new immigrants avoided the long, hazardous trip north and the chore of raising young on frozen tundra. They stayed and had their families where the living was easy. Year by year more geese got the message, and today there are an estimated 50,000 sedentary geese in New Jersey alone.

They have moved into succulent grasses with abandon: parks, fields, picnic areas, golf courses and private lawns. They eat grass down to the roots like goats. They defecate enthusiastically wherever they are, and in the heat of summer the effluvium can be overpowering. Beaches and swimming pools have been closed after an invasion of geese. And they are fiercely protective of their offspring. Parent birds will attack people and dogs fearlessly, and a nip from a 20-pound goose is not to be taken lightly. One woman in Seattle chased two geese out of her house after they had chased her in.

Authorities, responding to complaints from frustrated constituents, have tried everything to stop the goose takeover: blank explosives, plastic swans, stuffed owls and foxes, salt, mothballs, taped goose distress calls, remote-controlled toy boats.

Nothing worked. At first the geese were frightened off or kept away but they soon caught on and ignored the harassment. Trapping and relocation has been tried but to be effective it has to be an expensive year-round practice or re-population is inevitable. Though research continues and new high- and low-tech “cures” will be tried, the goose nuisance seems to be here to stay.

It is unlikely that Los Angeles and the Valley face the nightmare prospect of untold thousands of sedentary Canada geese. The Goose Project of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, which monitors the population, reveals that Canada goose numbers have been in decline for several years.

Loss of habitat is the primary cause. Lake Balboa in the Sepulveda Basin displaced cornfields where hundreds of geese fed on green shoots after harvesting, though the city’s wildlife lake area has helped compensate for the loss. There are concerns about sports concessions proposed for other parts of the Los Angeles Basin and at the Chatsworth Reservoir that would further reduce foraging areas.

The simple fact is there is no open space left in the Valley that would support geese. And the Valley is a semi-desert, subject to periodic drought. Summer in the Valley is a time of brown hills, meager lawns and warm, algae-filled lakes. Hardly a goose paradise.

Preservation of our remaining goose habitat areas will assure the return of these welcome visitors in the fall as they have returned for thousands of years. And, as they leave in early spring, we will realize that they are fulfilling their incredible migratory destiny.