The number of geese waddling around in the Van Heutspark is growing by the day. Although Coevorden likes to present itself as a goose town, residents and walkers do not like the excrement that comes with these animals. Yet the municipality can do almost nothing this summer, because it does not have a goose management plan.
Normally about forty domestic geese live in and around the canal of Coevorden, which have been specially released there. These are white farm geese and they have been walking there for years, but since a few years the park has had new residents: more than a hundred greylag geese with their young settle on the nutritious lawns every summer and swim in the water. This causes nuisance and especially a lot of feces.
The habitat of those greylag geese is located around the Ossehaar district, but because a water storage facility is currently being constructed there and many homes are being built, that place has been disturbed. The birds move via the Stieltjeskanaal to the park near the city center to raise their newborn young there and therefore cause nuisance at that location.
That is why councilor Hans Wering of Belangen Buitengebied Coevorden raises the problem with the alderman. He hears from local residents that they are ashamed of the park and that Pieterpad runners avoid the paths that are strewn with goose rolls: “If you look carefully and slalom over the paths, you could walk there without getting poo under your shoes. But people with prams or residents of the De Schutse nursing home with their rollators cannot get over this unscathed,” he says.
“That’s a shame, because it’s such a beautiful park, just not clean,” Wering continues. “Coevorden is a city of geese and the animals certainly belong here, but there are now far too many. That has to change, but the municipality is not doing anything. There should actually be a goose management plan.”
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