Tensions between the Foster City mayor and a New Jersey environmental group over how much financial help the animal organization should provide for the city’s Canada Goose mitigation has led to questions about the potential partnership’s viability.
On Tuesday, Foster City Mayor Jon Froomin said the plan is to move forward with the current status quo of the city paying for an environmental review around geese mitigation, and he no longer expects any financial partnership with the Animal Protection League of New Jersey after he sent an Aug. 8 letter to the organization asking for details on its financial offer of a non-lethal plan to help minimize issues between geese and humans.
In an Aug. 18 letter back to Froomin from the Animal Protection League, the organization declined to accept Froomin’s offer because it argued the proposal was vastly different from the organization’s original offer to pay for a landscape architect for a solid plan for geese mitigation at Leo J. Ryan Park. It also argued the organization did not offer to pay for the environmental review work mentioned by the mayor in his letter.
Susan Russell, the wildlife policy director with the Animal Protection League of New Jersey, said the city and mayor never responded or engaged with the offer when first offered over a year ago and only responded recently, something that surprised the organization. She noted multiple letters and discussions indicated the offer was for landscaping options on Leo Ryan Park, something that would cost $10,000 to $15,000. The park is considered a wonderful environment for geese due to its maintained grass near a waterway that provides a good area to avoid predators. Russell said the organization has a process for dealing with towns that are discussing killing animals, including working with a landscape architect to help find solutions.
“They never took it seriously, ignored us, and then called us two years later,” Russell said.
The animal activist organization also said it would not pay for work from a consulting firm like Wildlife Innovations, the city-contracted firm that is working to create a mitigation plan providing the framework for managing the geese population and what techniques to use.
Froomin said he reached out following the city’s decision to no longer cull the geese as it better fit with the organization’s original offer, noting there was no need to contact them before because culling was still an option and the city wasn’t in a position to accept the offer. Froomin said he was not surprised by the response he received from them and got the response he expected.
“It was just reopening the lines of communication,” Froomin said.
In August, the city agreed to no longer consider using lethal methods to deal with its growing Canada Goose population. Its contract with Wildlife Innovations, which is producing the management strategy plan to specify non-lethal options, is now expected to cost around $171,000, with the original contract at $55,000.
Foster City had originally been given permission by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services to cull around 100 Canada Geese, although the city never killed any before its permit expired this year. It originally wanted to do so over the growing goose population and associated health and environmental concerns. A council majority had argued the situation constitutes a public health hazard, degraded water quality in lagoons and issues with the city’s parks and sports fields. The city is now looking at a plan without lethal methods, with an environmental review expected to be completed in six months.
Froomin said the original information he saw was they were willing to pay for a plan and was engaging with the organization.
“They specifically said they were willing to pay for a plan as long as we took culling off the table for a year,” Froomin said.
