OTTAWA – On a sunny summer day, the beach at Ottawa’s Petrie Island is a popular spot.
But besides the sunbathers, it’s also attracting a less welcome guest – flocks of Canada geese.
And those geese are pooping machines. Each one can produce two pounds a day, loaded with 140 different kinds of bacteria.
Last year, the beach had to be closed for 13 days.
Ottawa city councillor Bob Monette says the geese are almost like dogs.
“Last year, all you would have seen would have been geese droppings everywhere,” he said. “They’re almost like dogs. The volume of it is crazy.”
It’s clear the geese have to go, but getting rid of them is not easy. The city of Ottawa has tried decoys, dogs, and noise machines, but none of them worked.
Until they discovered a new weapon.
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It’s a remote-controlled hexcopter – and it’s a goose’s worst nightmare. The tiny chopper swoops, soars, and hovers, harassing the geese until they finally get the message, and leave.
Self-described “goose buster” Steve Wambolt explains.
“It can actually go airborne and match the bird head-to-head,” he said.
“Where(as) any other device we’ve deployed in the past, they’re all ground devices. Once the bird’s off the ground, the threat’s gone. I take that away from them so I can still threaten them while they’re airborne.”
It’s not an easy fight. Walbolt spends six hours a day on the beach, trying to scare the feathers off the geese, and seagulls.
And he’s got more tricks up his sleeve. His chopper flashes lights, even plays sounds of predators like hawks.
Wambolt normally uses his drone to do aerial photography. But he’s discovering this could be a much more lucrative business. The city is paying him $30,000 this summer, and with the goose population exploding, he sees a lot of growth potential.
“The problem with the geese, if they’re not taken care of right now, they’re just going to increase,” he said. ” It’s going to get worse and worse and worse. So we do need to come up with something and get rid of the poop on the beach.”
Wambolt says his tactics are working. Last year, as many as 160 geese munched grass here. That number is now down to 15 or 20.
Beach-goer Robin Averill agrees – it was bad.
“There would be poo everywhere and they would just hover here and all you would hear is them making their noises and their sounds. And some of them can be a little aggressive, some of them come up and actually attack the children.”
But now it’s the geese that are under attack, and they are beating a noisy retreat.
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