Geese at Walton Park rounded up, banded

Friday, July 15, 2005

By Steve Moyer

Nevada Daily Mail

Missouri Department of Conservation employees caused some concerned citizens of Nevada to wonder what was going on with the geese and ducks at Isaac Walton Park. Nevada Parks and Recreation Director Carol Branham said she had been contacted only shortly before the project began. "They called up and told us they were going to round up the geese and ducks and band them," Branham said. "We made sure the police knew about it so there wouldn't be any mix-ups."

According to a department spokesman, Lana Wilson, the operation at the park wasn't planned for but was an offshoot of an on-going study of the waterfowl population in Vernon County. "Originally we weren't going to do those birds," Wilson said. "Every so often we do studies at Schell-Osage or Four Rivers and see why the birds are attracted to those areas. The idea to do Walton Park just came up and we went with it."

This is a good time to do the banding because the birds are moulting and can't fly, making it easier to round them up. Care has to be taken, however, because of the heat. "We try not to agitate them too much," Wilson said. "We take a few, maybe four boats out and slowly move the birds toward the shore where there is a net setup to hold them. Once they are in the net we need to work fairly quickly to record their age and sex and then get them banded so we can let them go."

Wilson said there were 30 to 40 geese that had their information recorded at Walton Lake but there were several that had already been banded at other areas.

Geese can be imprinted with an area and will return to it again and again. "One time we took some geese from Schell-Osage, about 20 pairs, and tried to get them down to Bushwhacker but we did it when they could fly and they beat the truck back," Wilson said.

One tactic the department is asking the city to employ is to let the grass grow long around the city's lakes to encourage the geese to find a new home. "Geese don't like long grass," Wilson said. "They like short grass, they like manicured lawns."

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