Rochester parks dept. begins egg addling in effort to manage goose population

Rochester Parks and Recreation will continue on with egg addling efforts aimed at curbing the city’s proliferating, though often pesky giant Canada goose population — despite some calls from community members for the city to consider alternative management practices.

Public scrutiny over the practice of “addling” goose nests — applying corn oil to the eggshell, blocking air passage and delegitimizing the egg — began in earnest over the weekend, when Greg Munson, former director of Quarry Hill Nature Center and longtime Post-Bulletin “Nature Nut” columnist, published an opinion piece speaking out against the city’s plans. 

Munson called the city’s plans to manage the goose population inhumane, adding that he believes Parks and Rec and a paid consultant “reneged” on an agreement to follow specific guidelines for controlling the geese.

In response to the column, Parks and Rec Director Paul Widman said the ‘addling’ idea was recommended by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and has been in the works for years, after receiving numerous complaints over the level of goose droppings at Silver Lake.

Volunteers are set to start the addling process at Silver Lake on Wednesday, but Wiman and another coordinator treated roughly “10 or 11” nests in the area early Monday morning. It was not the plan to treat nests before volunteers arrived, Widman said, but he felt it was necessary to avoid conflicts on Wednesday, after it became clear a demonstration was possible.

“We’ll still have some work for our volunteers [on Wednesday], but we didn’t want to put them in harm’s way,” said Widman. “Frankly, I don’t want to put them in a position to be harassed.”

What do the Guidelines say?

As part of the process to receive addling permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and the Minnesota DNR, Widman says the city has pledged to follow the Humane Society’s addling guidelines.

Both PETA and the Humane Society allow for egg addling, albeit only before the egg has reached 14 days in the incubation period.

To satisfy that requirement, Parks and Rec plans to use the “float test” to make sure no egg is oiled that has been incubated for more than 14 days. (Basically, if the egg floats in water, it’s too late to treat.) During Monday’s outing, Widman said he found no eggs past the 14-day threshold at Silver Lake and does not expect to find any of that age on Wednesday. 

Widman also said Parks and Rec plans to utilize some ceramic eggs on three or four nests, plus to check development of the goslings in addled eggs after the fact — two criteria put forth by Munson.

Munson’s last request, however — leaving two eggs per nest unoiled — was where Parks and Rec declined to budge, with the expectation that there will still be many goslings around Rochester in a month’s time.

“We discussed it with the DNR and with PETA, Humane Society and GeesePeace, [and] there was no recommendation to do this,” said Widman. “We were aware that even at the most aggressive efforts at this scale, there will be many nests and eggs untreated.”

Munson, who up until recently had been signed up to volunteer on the addling efforts, says he had concerns about the project initially, but decided to participate after purportedly getting an agreement from Canada Goose Management, Inc.’s Tom Keefe, hired by the city to oversee the addling project, to follow the three aforementioned conditions.

Once the initial event plans came through, however, Munson says it was clear those conditions would not be met — so he decided to revoke his support and publish his opinion piece against the project.

“At that point, I knew I couldn’t and didn’t want to take part, and I wanted to let people know what was going on out there,” said Munson.

He added the plan to only leave six untreated eggs (out of a possible egg count near 200) was unnecessarily robust, especially with egg incubation already under way for most nests. The best way to control the population humanely, he says, would be to replace most — not all — eggs in a nest with ceramic replicas, before the incubation period even begins. 

“If you go into the nests during egg-laying, remove the eggs you want, and replace them with ceramics, you won’t see any development — and thus it’s the most humane process,” said Munson. “I think the City of Rochester should be doing the most humane process.”

While Widman confirmed a conversation between Munson and Keefe took place, he says Munson was never a part of the approval process and no formal agreement was ever made. 

“We were answering questions of a concerned resident,” said Widman. “That’s what it amounted to.”

Widman also says the Humane Society reached out directly to him Monday afternoon, and confirmed that the department is following protocol.

 A Matter of Balance

Since Rochester Public Utilities shut down the coal power plant that turned Silver Lake into a year-round goose paradise in 2008, Rochester’s resident Canada goose population has dropped in recent years — although in the warmer months, around 30,000 geese still take up residence in the city.

Still, Widman says the Silver Lake Park area is suffering as a result of the geese: the playground is covered, picnic tables are borderline unusable, and some bikers have taken falls after slipping on slick, dropping-covered asphalt. Water contamination has also become a problem at Foster Arend and Cascade Lakes, two popular city-operated swimming holes.

The goal of the addling program is not to eliminate geese from Rochester, he says, but to provide a better balance of the “undesirable” characteristics geese can pose.

“The resident geese population here has been unchecked since the early 1900s,” said Widman. “I can’t say we’re spending all of our time on this, but it's definitely impacting the public’s enjoyment of the parks. We’re after balance, and we’re proceeding with the most humane approach possible.”

It’s well-documented that Rochester was the home to a thriving population of giant Canada geese, 30 years after they were declared extinct — so the city will always have a connection to the stately yet feisty birds.

Daniel Eckberg, a former University of Minnesota researcher who documented Rochester’s love-hate relationship with the geese, told Med City Beat in 2018 that the problems the geese pose are evened out by the deep connection the city has to the birds. 

“It would be naive to say they’re never a problem, but hasty to say they all need to be eliminated,” said Eckberg.

Isaac Jahns is a Rochester native and a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. He reports on politics, business and music for Med City Beat.