Roger Gress says Canada geese are a thing of beauty to a lot of people.
He's just not one of them.
The overseer of Fargo's parks, like many of his counterparts in the region, hopes new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service guidelines will help reduce the number of geese in the area.
At the very least, he wants the geese to stay away from his parks and golf courses.
The new guidelines, which go into effect Jan. 1, will allow state wildlife agencies, landowners and airports more flexibility in controlling the numbers of resident Canada geese, those geese that do not migrate but stay in the area year-round.
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They can do that with special seasons and expanded shooting hours, as well as by allowing hunters to use electronic goose calls and unplugged shotguns.
The Central Flyway, which includes the Dakotas, and the Mississippi Flyway, which includes Minnesota, would be allowed to use those methods.
Gress, executive director of the Fargo Park District, is particularly worried about problems with geese at Edgewood and Rose Creek golf courses.
"They are a thing of beauty to a lot of people, but they make such a mess they hurt our business," Gress said. "Our people have taken a very aggressive approach, everything to shoo them out of here. You just can't harm them."
Fergus Falls, Minn., which is home to hundreds of resident Canada geese year-round, faces the same problems as Fargo.
The geese, which sometimes number in the thousands in the fall, mess up the grass and walkways near the city's open water and create a health hazard.
"People like watching them and any proposal to remove them would be controversial," said Don Schultz of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources office in Fergus Falls.
John Cooper is secretary of the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks and president of the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.
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As a federal warden in Minot, N.D., he helped other wildlife experts bring Canada geese back from near extinction in the 1970s. Now there are just too many of them, he said.
"When people don't see very many of them, they value them," Cooper said. "They become a pest when they see lots of them.
"Frankly, it's the right thing to do before we have problems with disease."
The problems are similar to urban deer issues in Rapid City, S.D., and Fargo, and to some degree, Minot, he said.
"I don't know that it is going to change a whole lot," the DNR's Schultz said of the new guidelines.
"It will allow us to hunt in August, but I don't know if hunting geese in August makes much sense.
"I don't see it as being a silver bullet in making the goose problems go away."
Readers can reach Forum Sports Editor Dave Jurgens at (701) 241-5504
