The Sullivan’s Pond geese have been carted away to a familiar winter home after Halifax awarded a three-year contract to Hope for Wildlife.
Every winter, the group of geese that reside in Dartmouth are provided with winter care including safe shelter, transportation and medical needs, away from the pond.
Over the past several years the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) has had a contract with Hope for Wildlife, an animal rehabilitation centre in Seaforth, N.S.
But with the contract expiring, the HRM had tendered a new three-year-long contract for the service.
In an email on Friday, Erin DiCarlo, a spokesperson for the municipality, confirmed that the contract had been awarded to the wildlife centre.
The geese were gathered up and transported to their winter home earlier this week.
The municipality did not provide a dollar figure for the contract but the Halifax Examiner reports that the HRM will pay Hope for Wildlife $10,800 for the three-year term.
Hope Swinimer, founder of Hope for Wildlife, told Global News earlier this month that she hoped to be awarded the three-year contract again.
“We quite enjoy them, and we’ve become good at what we do,” Swinimer told Global News. “We have this connection with them.”
In 2019 the geese were gathered nearly a month early after a woman reported being attacked by one of the nine geese.
Swinimer said her centre took them in and managed to find the instigator.
“We ended up bringing the one here that’s lived here ever since that incident,” she said. “He’s one of those kind of geese that likes to come up to you and honk, and I can see where that would make certain people fearful,” she says.
Swinimer says the goose has been very well-behaved since then, and even found a girlfriend at his new home.
Winter care for the geese is a lot of work, Swinimer says.
Luckily, the Hope for Wildlife range doesn’t have deer during the winter, so the geese take over the one-acre territory.
“They have the deer shed, they have free range if they want to go in and out of the elements,” Swinimer says.
With files from Global News’ Karla Renic