Our city is blessed with a beautiful park, and a pond which is home to many ducks and geese.  Often, you’ll see parents and grandparents helping little kids feed the geese.  They think it’s sweet, but it’s not. According to many wildlife and environmental organizations, the parks department  should post signs :  Stop! Don’t Feed The Geese

Bread is actually harmful to geese because it contains too many carbohydrates, and makes them fat.  Bread, crackers, popcorn, and other high-carbohydrate foods are like junk food to birds. They provide very little nutritional content, and birds that fill up on them will not seek out other, more  nutritious food. Furthermore,  when bread gets wet it becomes sticky and can get lodged in the bird’s digestive system.  As a result,  impaction and fermentation may  lead to death.  This happens even when the bread is dry and stale.

While you may think that it’s  kind to feed the geese,  you can be jeopardizing their health, as well as polluting the environment. Wild geese have plenty of healthy food in their habitat. Let the geese find food on their own so that they and other animals in the environment can stay healthy.

The park  is now overpopulated with geese.  Little children walk among them, and the parents think it’s perfectly safe.  Often, the geese  stop traffic as they waddle across the across the road. They’re not in the least bit afraid of cars, dogs, or people.  So, what’s wrong with this scenario? Geese who rely on humans for food lose their natural fear, and may become aggressive toward humans who do not feed them. Consequently, it’s not really safe to encourage a small child to wander into a flock of geese.

When humans regularly feed the geese,  it can also cause the ponds to become over crowded, leaving weaker birds vulnerable.  Overpopulation can increase the likelihood of disease outbreaks, such as botulism, duck plague, and aspergillosis, a fungal infection.

Talk to the maintenance personnel at the park, and they’ll tell you that it’s overrun with feces.  And no, it’s not good for the grass, and doesn’t make for good fertilizer.  Feeding geese bread  will cause the birds to defecate more, leaving bacteria which helps spread disease.

Why does our city  encourage this harmful practice?  I suppose it has something to do with politics.  Once, I complained about it on a local online chat room, and was  lambasted as a mean spirited killjoy . Can’t you just see the headlines if the city council banned geese feeding in the park?  All of them would be voted out of office for suggesting such an ordinance. We have a four term mayor, but if he proposed such a ban, he’d probably  lose the next election.  And so it continues.

I know it’s not going to happen.  But I wish  our city parks department would post signs near the water:  PLEASE  DON’T FEED THE GEESE.