Denver is tired of goose poop, so it’s killing geese and giving meat to hungry families

More than 5,000 geese call Denver home, but the city has implemented a new program to scale that number back, KUSA reports.

This month, the Denver Parks and Recreation department rolled out its Goose Management Program under which the city captures and euthanizes Canada geese before either donating the meat to charitable organizations or incinerating it, the plan says.

“They are getting processed and they’re getting donated to needy families,” Denver Parks and Recreation deputy executive director Scott Gilmore said, according to KDVR.

“The geese populations within the city have just exploded. We get so many complaints about people coming out here with a blanket to sit on the grass, and they cannot sit on the grass because there’s so much goose poop in the parks,” Gilmore said, according to the TV station.

Gilmore said Denver absorbs 5,000 pounds of goose poop a day, The Denverite reported.

“That’s 35,000 pounds of poop a week, 140,000 pounds a month!” Gilmore said, according to the news outlet. “It all ends up in our streams and waterways.”

Officials hope fewer geese will make Denver’s ponds and lakes healthier, but the program has drawn its share of criticism, KUSA reported.

Dr. Marc Bekoff, a retired professor of biology and ecology from University of Colorado Boulder, said he doesn’t believe euthanasia is the answer.

“Killing them will not work in the long run,” Bekoff said, according to KUSA. “We will face this problem next year, as they faced in the past. Because once humans become part of the equation, in many cases they have to always be part of the equation.”

Since 2002, Denver has been coating goose eggs in cooking oil to stop embryo development, a method that has resulted in “in fewer gosling numbers,” the plan says.

During winter months, the city uses a ‘Goosinator,’ a remote-controlled vehicle that startles birds causing them to fly away, KUSA reported.

This story was originally published June 30, 2019 at 1:59 PM with the headline "Denver is tired of goose poop, so it’s killing geese and giving meat to hungry families."