Noord-Holland develops plan to reduce damage caused by geese; more may have to be culled

The province of Noord-Holland wants to significantly reduce the damage caused by geese to crops and nature. The new Faunabeheerplan Ganzen for 2025-2031 stated that attempts will initially be made for prevention, like fencing nets and using firecrackers to scare them away. More geese will have to be culled if this is unsuccessful. This is currently the case for 55,000 geese in Noord-Holland.

The damage caused by the geese has risen explosively over the last 20 years, which results in higher costs for the province. Noord-Holland spent over 15 million euros on compensation to farmers in 2023, an increase of almost 30 percent compared to a year earlier.

Almost 23 million euros has been reserved to tackle this issue in 2025, half of which will be spent on fixing the damage that geese cause. Just five million euros had to be spent on this in 2015.

Geese also pose a risk to flight safety, which is why the plan specifically focuses on banning geese within a 10-kilometer radius of Schiphol.

Geese are migratory birds by nature, but about 150,000 of them also stay in Noord-Holland in the summer. This number is doubled in the winter, which leads to more deforested fields and overgrazing in nature reserves. A significant majority of the members in the provincial council pushed for effective measures to limit the damage earlier this week.

The gassing or shooting of tens of thousands of geese has limited the strong growth in recent years, but the population is still not decreasing, said a deputy for the executive council, Jelle Beemsterboer. “We want to get to a situation where we can drastically reduce the number of geese we have to kill a year and are able to manage the geese population at a low level.”

In order to reduce the damage of grey geese in particular, he believes it is important that management units, farmers, hunters, and land managers work well together and coordinate their actions. If the population decreases, chasing them away with lasers or dogs would become more effective after a few years.

The province is hoping that killed geese will also used as food. “That we have to kill these animals is already bad enough, but if we also do not eat them after, then that is pure waste of food,” said Beemsterboer.

Cooling stations spread across the province will be used to ensure that hunters can more easily supply geese to poulterers.De Faunabeheereenheid Noord-Holland based their plan on data from colleagues from Flevoland, Utrecht, Zeeland, and Zuid-Holland and from scientists and experts.