A threat to public health and safety?

NOT A PET, NO THREAT

It should be remembered from the start that Canada geese are wild animals at heart and are not pets. They may be unpredictable, but they are far less dangerous than many birds and animals, and certainly less so than many peoples’ cherished canine and feline friends.

“Canada geese chase children”, “they can break your arm”, “they attack and bite people for no reason”….. the list of slurs goes on and on – usually voiced by people in the “Wildlife management” industry (pest controllers by the posh name) ,who are of course trying to drum up trade to keep themselves in business. THEY ARE LIARS. There are very few documented and substantiated incidents that they can prove ever happened, but this does not quell the urban myth industry, or that of the lazy complainer.

  • I have lost count of the number of times that I have seen children chasing birds. This is not in itself always harmful to the birds. It is good that the birds become aware of the complexities of man, that for every one that offers them food there is another that would offer food to kill them for sheer fun. But some kids undoubtedly chase to do harm with bricks and sticks- this is not harmless but some inbuilt primal hunting instinct that needs to be corrected by the parent. Very often not it isn’t.
  • Geese cannot break your arm, unless you had brittle bones perhaps. I and many others have been handling injured ones for many years. An injured bird is one that does not want to be caught and can be aggressive when trying to be restrained. This is probably because it believes that it is likely to be eaten if caught. Why so- because by the time it reaches maturity it will have witnessed many of its kind as well as other species fall prey to predators, as well as man and his dog. A survival instinct is as much learned as it is inbuilt.

Water companies like United Utilities also invent fiction and lies to try to back up their woeful ignorance of this wonderful bird.

Recently a flock of 60 were murdered by them in Lancashire.

They were allegedly attacking staff. One woman is alleged to have been “bitten so badly that she needed to visit her GP. ”

Having dealt with Canada’s in the hand as well as first hand, and knowing some people who have dealt with them for over 30 years, none of us have ever been “bitten” by a goose which required any visit to a doctor. These birds do not have teeth. Any “bite” would  be the equivalent of a love bite or a pinch- and probably less likely to require a trip to the GP from a contagious disease through human bodily fluids transmitted by kissing. They do not carry rabies, Aids or Ebola, and they can’t bugger you senseless either! One can only wonder if this UU hypochondriac time waster actually exists? But mud sticks, the PR liars  want people to believe that they had no choice and that the Canada goose attacks people, which it never does in truth.

If only the likes of DEFRA, Natural England and the AHVLA cared about native species that were poisoned by an unnatural non native chemical dumped by a polluting British chemical company. I remember dealing with some bloke called Herrity at some organisation or other connected with “wildlife surveillance”- waste of bloody space entirely. If only “the coalition of the shilling” -Sandwell council, The health and Safety Executive, The Environment agency, and The Health Protection Agency cared about the threat to human health posed by the chemicals concerned at Rattlechain lagoon instead of protecting business. But they didn’t care and we not them have exposed how wildlife and people were being threatened by this toxic lake of death.

 

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deadly waste

This is separate to the proven poisoning of lakes with Albright and Wilson  phosphates over the years, and the unseen or monitored release into the water catchment of calcium phosphates from a source known to contain thousands of tonnes of calcium phosphate pumped under discharge consent into the Birmingham Canal. Arguments concerning the amount of phosphate in Canada goose droppings are utterly laughable when compared to this man made activity, and also the studies that have been done about this, yet other species appear to have escaped similar scrutiny, do not agree on their findings.

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The still heavily contaminated Rattlechain lagoon

Questions should be asked of United Utilities of how much human excrement they pump into lakes and rivers with the associated phosphates generated?  At Lake Windermere for example where the Lake District National Park authority proposed a mass goose cull in 2012, the amount of phosphorus blamed on geese being responsible for polluting the lake was one of their reasons for the cull which was stopped after public outcry. From a freedom of information request that I submitted at the time, the Environment agency revealed that United Utilities had several discharge consents allowing human sewage to be deposited into the lake.

PEN3455 Discharge consents

UU however are all too quick to blame the Canada goose for this phosphate source at Lingley Mere which is their own pollution that will make people sick and ruin the environment. GOOSE SHIT IS VISBLE, THEIRS IS NOT.

The “threat” offered by geese defecating in the water or grass does not stop people from practising their leisure activities amongst the avian flocks around them, but there are some who do not want the geese spoiling their fishing swims, getting in the way of their boats or canoes, and who will use the excuse of “health risk” when they themselves probably pose a bigger one by being in the water themselves.

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Geese do not threaten the water sports users of the Sandwell valley. The water there is considered to be of good quality. People swim in it to train for triathlons.

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Swimmer and goose at swan pool

 

Sandwell council as land managers use the lazy excuse for culling when there are far more ugly threats to public health and safety in local parks. Alcohol abuse is a rampant disease in many parts of the borough, but they do not close off licences down nor round up the piss heads for culling. It is easy to blame a wild bird than to tackle a social disease that is only getting worse. Evidence of drug and alcohol abuse are frequent in Sandwell’s parks and open spaces.