Friesland to ‘get rid’ of 10,000 Greylag geese

Friesland provincial council has given the green light to the cull some 10,000 Greylag geese which, it says, are causing serious damage to crops.

‘If we don’t intervene now, the nuisance and the damage will be too great and we will have to take even more rigorous steps in the future,’ council official Hans Konst told the Telegraaf.
Some 17,000 geese are thought to summer in Friesland but officials want to reduce that to 7,000, in line with 2006 numbers.
As well as killing the birds, officials plan to plant less protein-filled grasses in popular breeding areas.
The Netherlands has struggled with its Greylag goose population for the past few years. In 2008, judges in Haarlem withdrew a permit for the cull of 12,000 geese in Noord Holland province.
That same year, officials on the Wadden Sea island of Texel announced plans to kill 6,000 geese to reduce the breeding population to 200.