New tactics used to grab geese

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While 50 opponents of goose roundups donned bird masks and honked horns at a rally outside Seattle parks headquarters earlier this week, federal wildlife agents took advantage of the event by simultaneously capturing birds across town at Seward Park.

That maneuver, which infuriated the activists, illustrated the tactics that U.S. Department of Agriculture agents are employing in the second summer of local goose removal.

Despite constantly being followed by Bob Chorush of The Goose People and other opponents of goose kills, the agents have managed to nab birds from Seattle parks at least five times in the past couple of weeks. They're operating under a permit that will let them destroy up to 4,200 birds in the Puget Sound region by mid-July.

The roundups are different from last summer, when the agents sneaked into parks before dawn, seizing birds in darkness. This year raids have been during the day, and agents obtain police escorts to keep protesters at bay.

Twice, the agents' caravans visited Gas Works Park, which is closed for maintenance. Though activists were excluded from the grounds, Chorush slowed a departing truck June 19 by standing in front as he yelled "goose killers" at the federal employees. More than 100 birds were taken.

Other times, the agents try to lose the activists in traffic.

Bill Clay, deputy administrator for the department's Wildlife Services, said goose removal in Washington state is more controversial than in any other region, requiring heightened security measures. Opponents frequently stake out parks and freeways they think may be next. For several days they waited aboard small boats near Hunts Point on the Eastside, waiting for wildlife agents.

The activists have inconvenienced the agents but have not stymied the roundups.

"We will continue to do the job we were hired to do," said department spokesman Jim Rogers. "It's just a matter of how we go about it."

The summer roundups and an April egg destruction were requested by local governments and landowners who want to reduce perennial piles of goose poop on lawns and sidewalks. Experiments with goose-chasing dogs, landscaping changes and scarecrows have failed to curtail the region's 25,000 Canada geese that have lost the instinct to migrate.

Birds are corralled during the early summer molt, when they lack flying feathers and are easier to capture. They are then suffocated with carbon-dioxide gas.

A new wrinkle this year is the use of large steel boxes, hauled inside the beds of pickups, where geese are gassed in the field instead of being taken away in wire cages. The "euthanasia chambers" were built specifically for the Washington state roundup, said Clay. There is no need to take them alive because no food banks here are accepting urban geese.

The Humane Society of the United States this week denounced what regional director Lisa Wathne called "gas chambers" in which the birds are traumatized by being crammed inside just before death.

The chase was on again yesterday morning, when Chorush said he pursued several federal vehicles from Magnuson Park, across the Highway 520 bridge to the Eastside, and then south through Renton and north to Boeing Field.

"At least they're not killing geese," he said by cell phone.

For a couple of hours, anyway.

Mike Lindblom can be reached at 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com.