The City of Hillsdale took aim at Canadian geese this week by launching a hunt at Baw Beese Lake.
The hunt, which runs from Sept. 15-30, serves as the city’s response to complaints about excessive amounts of geese feces in family-friendly areas such as Sandy Beach.
“We’ve been receiving public complaints about the mess for the past year and a half, so this is our solution to share the park a little better with the geese,” Hillsdale Director of Public Services Jake Hammel said.
While both the City of Hillsdale and the owners of the private concession stand near Sandy Beach attempted to clean up after the geese, the process was too costly and labor-intensive for them to continue.
“We realized that all of the labor and time we spent on removing their feces took our focus away from more important projects,” Hammel said.
City officials investigated other methods of abatement such as spraying repellent on the beach, constructing fences, or growing out the grass along the shoreline. These options proved to be either too expensive or too harmful to the environment, so the Michigan Department of Natural Resources recommended that they host a city-sponsored hunt.
Once the Hillsdale City Council approved the hunt in August, Hammel used a lottery system to select sixteen licensed hunters from a pool of 27 applicants. These hunters are placed under state regulations that only permit hunters to bag five geese per day and allow them a maximum possession of 15 geese.
“We did background checks on our hunters to make sure that they are quality, conscientious people. That way we won’t have just anyone showing up to hunt in our park,” Hammel said.
To further ensure the safety of townspeople, the park will be closed 7-11 a.m. on weekdays until Sept. 30. Bike paths and roadways leading directly to the lake will also be closed during those times.
The public response to the hunt has been largely supportive.
“Anyone who spends a substantial amount of time on the lake understands why we have to do this. One of our hunters actually lives on the lake and has boated over to the hunting parameters each morning,” Hammel said.
Senior Katie Wright frequently swims at Baw Beese and said she supports the hunt.
“I started noticing the geese this summer as more of a nuisance, and I hope this will help keep them off of the beaches,” Wright said.
As of this Tuesday, 20 geese have been exterminated. Hammel said he hopes the count will reach 100 by September 30.
“We’ll see how it goes this year and next year and then evaluate how effective it was and go from there,” he said. “We might adjust the dates of the hunt next year so we can catch more birds while they’re here in the summer.”