Santa Clara is struggling with an overgrown goose population and is now considering birth control for the geese.
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Santa Clara's much-loved Central park has become overrun by gaggles of geese with the unwanted side effect that large stretches of pavement and grass are covered in bird droppings. Residents have just gotten used to it and said "we just learn to live with it."
In response, the city is launching a population management plan that includes a kind of goose birth control known as egg addling that will prevent some of the goose eggs laid around the park from hatching.
"The only way to actually take care of the overpopulation of geese is to lower the population through this sort of birth control," Mathew Dodder told KCBS Radio.
Dodder is the head of a local chapter of the Audubon Society, he explained that this form of goose birth control involves plucking goose eggs from their nests.
"And then they are coated with a thin layer of oil which basically doesn't allow any gas transmission through the shell and the egg basically becomes dormant," he said.
Dodder said he supports this method given how far the goose population has climbed.
"Nobody is shot or relocated or netted or anything like that it is something the eggs are not allowed to develop," he said. "So, it does seem a very effective and humane way of solving the problem."
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