A plan has been released to manage the Canada goose population and wetlands in Anacostia Park. The National Park Service (NPS) is accepting public comments on its Draft Anacostia Park Wetland and Resident Canada Goose Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement. The plan will guide operation of the Washington, DC park for the next 15 years.
NPS plans to schedule public meetings to discuss the plan at unspecified dates during the next two months.
NPS is trying to restore the wetlands in the park but Canada geese are eating too much of the vegetation. So NPS is offering five alternatives to deal with the problem:
A. Do nothing.
B. NPS' preferred alternative: Taking aggressive action to manage the shoreline along the Anacostia River with tactics such as invasive species control and restoring the area. At the same time, NPS would control the goose population by a variety of means ranging from possibly killing some of them off, scaring them away, and controlling the population by oiling the eggs.
C. The same as B but not as aggressively.
D. Removing some obstacles causing erosion but not taking much other aggressive action. This action would not involve not killing any geese unless other population control measures came up with a goose egg in their effectiveness.
E. Taking aggressive action to modify the environment but doing less to control the geese. NPS might scare and harass the geese and control reproduction but would not kill any of them.
Send comments by September 26 to http://www.parkplanning.nps.gov/ANAC, or mail them to Alex Romero, superintendent, National Capital Parks--East, 1900 Anacostia Dr. SE., Washington, DC 20020, fax (202) 690-1425.
For details, see http://www.parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectID=18040.
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