JEFFERSON CITY, MO. ? Imagine uninvited guests taking over your yard, fouling it with waste, preventing you from enjoying the land and making your only option for a solution an appeal for help from the government.

Six property owners who faced that problem recently received help from the Missouri Department of Conservation to remove nearly 500 nuisance Canada geese from their lands.

In mid-June, state workers rounded up and removed 481 geese from a country club and two neighborhoods in Columbia, a residential area in St. Louis, Kansas City’s zoo and Lake Tapawingo.

The landowners asked for the removal of the geese to get relief from problems associated with large numbers of geese. Those problems include water quality degradation caused by goose droppings, tens of thousands of dollars damage from the grass eating birds destroying lawns and injuries to humans caused by aggressive male geese protecting their territories during nesting season.

Before approving the trapping and removal of geese, the Conservation Department requires landowners to try measures that will encourage the geese to leave on their own. Trained dogs to harass the geese, pyrotechnic scare tactics, sterilizing goose eggs and fencing were among the measures tried. When these measures failed, however, more drastic steps were required.

Roundups must be conducted during the few weeks in June and July when the birds molt their flight feathers. The birds are herded into holding pens where they can be captured by hand.

The fate of each goose removed depends upon its age. Young birds, which will “imprint”, or adopt, a new location as their home, were relocated to a new home in a rural area. Adults, which would return to the area where they were trapped, were sent to a meat processing facility.

The roundups netted 68 juveniles and 413 adults. The processed birds were donated to food banks. Laboratory testing prior to the roundup showed the birds were safe for human consumption.

The property owners paid a fee to offset the cost of trapping the geese and transporting them to the processing plant. The food banks receiving the processed meat paid for transportation from the processor.