Watching the news last night about the miraculous landing of US AIrways Flight 1549, got me wondering if any airports are using a tried and true method for chasing away geese: border collies.
Border Collies will herd virtually anything and have been used for years by golf courses and public parks to keep geese from fouling (pun intended) up the property with their pounds of goose droppings per bird.
We have a five year old Border Collie, Finnegan, and he is a bundle of energy. To some people BCs seem like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder dogs, but the reality is their brains are hard-wired to chase things that move and have been almost as good with geese as they are with sheep.
Some 20+ years ago, a fellow by the name of David Marcks was a golf course superintendent in Connecticut, and grappling with the problems too many Canada Geese causing damage to his golf course. After trying all the known methods of repelling the geese, he tried the idea of using dogs to spook the geese away. Experimentation with several breeds of dogs often brought initial success, but most dogs soon tired of the sport of chasing the geese. Most had been bred to fetch something back, and were frustrated when they couldn’t actually fetch anything.
One well publicized goose problem in New York City's Central Park was so bad that Border Collies were brought in to rectify the situation.
Parks officials said that before turning to the dogs, they tried a variety of options: education campaigns to stop people from feeding the geese; letting the grass grow taller to disrupt the birds’ eating habits; building fences to confuse them and try to limit access to certain areas.
Before the Border Collies were brought in, Central Park had around 300 Canada Geese. Afterwards, the number dwindled down to about a dozen birds.
Border collies are used in such cases because they have been bred as herd animals and are able to frighten geese via “the stare,” a particular look and stance that leads geese to conclude that the dogs are predators, according to park officials.
Sometimes the geese allow themselves to be corralled by the collies before flying off; at other times they fly away when they see the dogs coming. By contrast, geese quickly lose their fear of human scare tactics, like shouting and arm waving.
Even dogs that have never been trained before, have the Collie Eye or Stare. We once took Finnegan to an farm in our town and there was a pen full of sheep next to the parking lot. All Finnegan had to do was look at the sheep and they turned and ran.
Moreover, Border Collies are a humane method of dealing with geese. There is no need for poison, shooting, contraceptives or some of the other methods that have proven unsuccessful in dealing with our overpopulated goose flocks. Sometimes the best solution is one of the cheapest. Considering how much replacing one Airbus A300 will cost US Airways, it seems like a good investment.