By Callie D. Moore
Guest Columnist
Since the development of the Lake Chatuge Watershed Action Plan in the early 2000s, I’ve learned more about geese and goose poop than most people would ever want to know.
My most recent exploration into fowl fecal matter began on Aug. 12, when water samples that we collected from the swim beach at the Clay County Recreation Park on Lake Chatuge failed to meet the EPA’s safety standards for swimming.
MountainTrue conducts weekly water testing from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend at 80 popular recreation locations, 13 of which are in the Hiwassee River watershed of North Carolina and north Georgia. All of last summer and this one, Lake Chatuge has been one of our sparkling jewels, with all four of our testing sites on track to have a perfect record for the season.
That is, until the geese showed up at the Clay County Swim Beach.
The Canada goose (Branta canadensis) has historically been present in North Carolina and Georgia in both migratory and residential populations. During the 1970s, the number of migratory geese coming to these states declined drastically.
In response, in the early 1980s, state wildlife agencies introduced populations of a goose subspecies with weak migrating skills that quickly adapted to the suburban lakes and rivers of Georgia and North Carolina. This new population of resident geese exploded into 45,000 birds in Georgia and 100,000 birds in North Carolina but, generations later, they have next to no migrating skills.
Geese and other avian wildlife may seem like a beautiful and natural part of the lakeside environment, but a large waterfowl population can cause several problems for humans, water quality and the birds themselves. A single Canada goose creates as much as 2-3 pounds of waste per day.
These droppings are not just unsightly and odorous; they can make people sick. Goose feces carries similar bacterial strains to those present in mammal waste. Research has shown that goose poop contains a wide variety of pathogens capable of infecting humans.
Our testing shows that the elevated bacteria count is confined to the shallower, warmer beach and doesn’t affect the larger cove. It also doesn’t affect nearby wells. However, even if tainted water doesn’t run into the shallow waters, fecal matter in the sand still presents a health hazard to children who may play there.
So why has a gaggle of geese taken over the swim beach at the Clay County Recreation Park? Likely because the beach provides unobstructed, open access to the lake. Geese tend to avoid vegetated shorelines and lakeside buffers, as they provide good hiding places for predators. Now that they have taken up residence, they can be stubborn to move.
MountainTrue’s Swim Guide program runs through this Labor Day weekend, so visit theswimguide.org/affiliates/mountaintrue-west/ before heading out to enjoy the weekend at the swim beach or any of the other popular recreation sites we test. Ultimately, we hope to partner with Clay County on a long-term solution that will rid Lake Chatuge of its goose poop problem once and for all.
The writer works in Murphy as western regional director of MountainTrue.