URBANA, Ill. (AP) - The Urbana Park District board has unanimously approved a plan for a charity harvest of geese at Crystal Lake to help bring the population from about 100 geese down to 10.
“We want some geese to remain,” said Derek Liebert, the park district’s superintendent of planning and operations. “Our goal is to manage them at a sustainable level.”
Under the proposal, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Division will collect the geese and take them to a facility to be killed, where the meat will then be donated to a food bank, according to The News-Gazette. The park district will first need to apply for a permit from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
“We never wanted to be here,” Liebert said, noting that the park district has been trying to manage the Canada geese population since at least 2012. “We really wanted to use every tool available to us so that we wouldn’t come to the point where we’re considering this.”
The charity harvest is expected to cost between $4,000 and $6,000 depending on the number of geese that are killed.
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