{"id":21580,"date":"2026-04-22T10:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/22\/california-town-scheme-get-rid-geese\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T10:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:11:08","slug":"california-town-scheme-get-rid-geese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/22\/california-town-scheme-get-rid-geese\/","title":{"rendered":"One town\u2019s scheme to get rid of its geese"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cPull over!\u201d I order my brother one sunny February afternoon. Our target is in sight: a gaggle of Canada geese, pecking at grass near the dog park. As I approach, tiptoeing over their grayish-white poop, I notice that one bird wears a white cuff around its slender black neck. It\u2019s a GPS tracker\u2014part of a new tech-centered campaign to drive the geese out of my hometown of Foster City, California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"the
__________________________
THE PLACE<\/strong>
Foster City, CA
USA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

About 300 geese live in this sleepy Bay Area suburb, equal to nearly 1% of our human population\u2014and some say this town isn\u2019t big enough for the both of us. Goose poop notoriously blanketed our middle school\u2019s lawn, and the birds have hassled residents for generations. My own grandmother remembers when geese took over her garage for five whole minutes before waddling out. She says, \u201cI wanted to kill them, but I thought I\u2019d get in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, that idea doesn\u2019t fly here. City officials backed out of a previous plan to kill 100 geese following uproar from local environmentalists. Still, the poop creates a public health hazard<\/a>; the birds need to go.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So the city paid nearly $400,000\u2014roughly $1,300 per goose\u2014to Wildlife Innovations, a company that resolves conflicts between humans and wildlife, to haze the geese with gadgets. The company\u2019s approach is \u201cbasically, making the geese less comfortable,\u201d Dan Biteman, head of the goose management plan and senior wildlife biologist at Wildlife Innovations, tells me.<\/p>\n

The need for such conflict resolution is on the rise<\/a> as land development collides with changes in animal behavior. Though overpopulation of Canada geese is a national nuisance in the US, such tensions also surface with other species in this country and elsewhere, including grizzlies<\/a> on the Montana prairies, coyotes<\/a> on San Francisco streets, and savanna elephants<\/a> in Tanzania parks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So the people whose job it is to deal with recalcitrant critters are bringing on the gadgets.<\/p>\n

Back in Foster City, I spot a black camera mounted to a tree trunk at Gull Park by the lagoon. They\u2019re in seven parks around town, programmed to snap photos every 15 minutes and transmit them back to Wildlife Innovations HQ. If they detect geese, a biologist immediately drives over to disperse the birds. One team member uses devices like lasers or drones; another brings along a goose-hating border collie named Rocky.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"An
Belligerent birds must grapple with the Goosinator.<\/figcaption>
ANNIKA HOM<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As a special measure, staff deploy the \u201cGoosinator,\u201d a small, remote-controlled neon-orange pontoon boat with a fearsome dog-like mouth painted on its bow, meant to evoke geese\u2019s fear of coyotes and bright colors. It comes with attachable wheels and can zoom around on land or water to chase birds away. Biteman tells me the company is thinking about mounting speakers on trees and flying drones that will screech the calls of goose predators like red-tailed hawks or golden eagles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company received federal permits required by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to stick GPS trackers on 10 geese, too. This way, staff can surveil the geese and research their behavior and movements.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

At local goose hangouts, signs that look like \u201cWanted\u201d posters alert the public to the new plan. As I watch some culprits graze (and defecate) on a church lawn, I think to myself: Enjoy it while it lasts.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Annika Hom is an award-winning independent journalist. She\u2019s written for <\/em>National Geographic, <\/em>Wired, and more.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPull over!\u201d I order my brother one sunny February afternoon. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}