Waterfowl advocates say geese deserve seat at planning table
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A wildlife advocacy group monitoring the Canada goose population at Prospect Park has formally requested that the birds, or at least their interests, be granted a form of representation in the park’s upcoming landscaping review, arguing that recent proposed changes to the lake’s shoreline would meaningfully affect nesting patterns without any input from those most directly impacted.
The request, submitted as public comment ahead of a community planning meeting, asks the Parks Department to consider goose habitat needs as a formal agenda item rather than an afterthought addressed only in response to complaints.
The Underlying Dispute
The proposed changes under review involve reshaping a section of the lake’s shoreline to reduce erosion and improve drainage, a project the department says is necessary for long term infrastructure reasons unrelated to wildlife.
Advocacy group founder Wendell Okafor, who has tracked the park’s goose population informally for nine years, said the proposed reshaping would eliminate a low sloping bank that geese have used consistently for nesting during the past several seasons.
“Nobody consulted anyone about the geese specifically,” Okafor said. “I understand erosion control is a real engineering need. I am not opposed to the project existing. I am asking that somebody, anybody, actually map where the birds nest before reshaping the exact bank they use every single spring.”
Parks Department Response
A Parks Department spokesperson said the agency does conduct environmental review as part of any shoreline project, including consideration of wildlife impact, but acknowledged that goose nesting specifically had not been separately flagged as a distinct concern prior to Okafor’s submission.
“We take wildlife impact seriously in our planning process,” the spokesperson said. “We had not received a specific, detailed goose nesting map prior to this comment period. Now that we have one, we will incorporate it into our environmental review before finalizing the shoreline design.”
The spokesperson noted that Canada geese are extremely common throughout the city’s parks system and that the department does not typically treat their presence as a limiting factor on infrastructure projects, given the species’ broader population stability regionally.
Community Reaction
Reaction among regular park visitors has been mixed, reflecting New York’s famously complicated relationship with Canada geese, an abundant species often appreciated for its presence but also associated with droppings on walking paths and occasional aggressive behavior during nesting season.
“I love watching the geese,” said longtime park visitor Simone Dellacroix. “But I also step around goose droppings every single day on my walk. I have complicated feelings about advocating harder for more of them to nest closer to the paths I use.”
Okafor acknowledged the tension directly. “I am not asking anyone to love stepping in goose droppings,” he said. “I am asking that if we are going to reshape their nesting area, we do it with some awareness of the tradeoff, rather than accidentally, as a side effect of an erosion project nobody connected to the birds until I raised it.”
Wildlife Management Context
Canada geese populations in urban parks across the United States have been managed through a variety of approaches over the years, and municipal wildlife policy generally balances resident enjoyment, public health concerns related to droppings and aggressive nesting behavior, and the ecological role the birds play within a park’s broader ecosystem.
The Parks Department has periodically addressed goose management citywide, including through egg addling programs in certain locations intended to manage population growth without direct harm to the birds, reflecting a broader municipal approach to balancing wildlife presence with public space usability.
What the Advocacy Group Wants
Okafor’s group is not asking for the shoreline project to be cancelled, but rather for a modified design that preserves at least a portion of the current low sloping bank alongside whatever erosion control measures engineers determine are necessary.
“This does not have to be either or,” he said. “Engineers are creative. If they know in advance that a specific twenty foot stretch matters for nesting, I trust they can design around that constraint just as easily as they can design without it. The problem was never that this could not be solved. The problem was that nobody asked the question before drawing up the plans.”
Where It Stands
The Parks Department said the shoreline project remains in a public comment period, with a revised design expected to incorporate feedback received, including Okafor’s nesting map, before any final approval.
Okafor said he considers the department’s willingness to review the goose specific data a genuine, if modest, success. “I did not expect a goose advisory board,” he said. “I expected to be ignored entirely, honestly. Getting an actual acknowledgment that the nesting bank matters, and a promise to look at it before finalizing anything, is more than I thought this would achieve when I started writing the comment.”
The Mapping Project
Okafor said the nesting map itself took the better part of two seasons to compile, involving early morning visits before regular park traffic disturbed the birds, and a spreadsheet cross referencing nest locations against water level fluctuations over time. He said he initially began the project purely out of personal interest rather than any advocacy goal, and only realized its practical use once the shoreline proposal was announced and he recognized that his casual data collection happened to overlap almost exactly with the section of bank slated for reshaping.
Related Coverage
More reporting on unusual civic advocacy efforts can be found at Bohiney Magazine, and a British perspective on comparable park wildlife disputes is available at The London Prat. Additional material is collected at NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com