Despite Protests, Their Geese Are Cooked

The board member, Fred Entin, told them that the board had decided at a meeting months earlier to euthanize the geese. Ambush said that it was too expensive to mail the minutes of the board meeting to all 600 Environ residents but that the boards of each member community had been informed. Not all of those boards, though, knew about the decision, according to Keller, who sits on the Fairhill Farm board.

Moneymaker and Hance immediately mobilized. "WATERVIEW'S GEESE TO BE SLAUGHTERED" read the 50 signs they posted near the pond June 23. They encouraged neighbors to attend a board meeting that night.

Board members said at the meeting that the decision was irreversible. Environ had obtained a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and had given the trapping company a $1,500 deposit toward the $3,000 fee.

Brasted, of the Humane Society, said geese are an increasingly common presence in the suburbs, where comfortable habitat discourages migration.

"We have big green lawns, and there are nice bodies of water, and there aren't a lot of predators," Brasted said. "We've created goose nirvanas, and then we're angry that they're here."

Larry Hindman, waterfowl project manager for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, which also signed off on the permit, said only two or three permits are issued each year in the state to euthanize geese. But he predicted that there will be more. "As people object to living next to large numbers of geese," he said, "this is probably going to become more and more common."

Twelve geese remain in the murky green waters of the Waterview community pond. The permit limited the killing to 100, and the lucky few were left behind.

Steven Landsman, president of Abaris, said a letter will be mailed to every Environ home inviting all residents to serve on an ad hoc committee to deal with the remaining geese.

The Environ board no longer wants to deal with the issue.

"In the future," Landsman said, "the geese will be handled by committee."