The emergence of the Netherlands as the most popular place in Europe for geese has prompted an urgent call for Dutch drivers to watch out for hundreds of birds breeding on the grassy junctions and motorways verges.
More than 500,000 geese are in the country in the warmer months, and 2.5 million overwinter there, amounting to a 95% increase on the numbers counted in the 1960s.
The Netherlands’ intensive farming and temperate climate make it the best country for geese in Europe, according to the Sovon Dutch centre for field ornithology, the organisation responsible for surveying bird populations.
The population boom, however, is not without problems. Roadside grasslands are particularly attractive to breeding birds because of their the abundance of clover leaves and protection from predators.
Hundreds of geese have been spotted off roads in Gelderland in the east of the country and elsewhere. Others have been swooping down into the paths of cars and lorries, presumably seeking to protect their offspring. A stretch of road in the town of Opheusden, in Gelderland, reported four collisions in a week.
Albert de Jong from the Sovon centre called for drivers to be wary, but insisted that it was for the government now to take the risks seriously and build infrastructure to deter the birds from major roads.
“We have during the summer more than 500,000 geese and we are a small country,” he said. “That’s because we are very suitable for them. The junctions on the motorways provide small pieces of nature. There is grass, access to water, and they are away from predatory risk as it is too dangerous for the foxes. Geese are very opportunistic.“It is a dangerous situation. I have seen some just flying in front of vehicles or walking on to the roads. They are defending their territory. First of all we need to discover the areas where they are breeding, where this is a problem. We know a lot of them but not all of them. We need to make it less attractive to the geese. Drivers aren’t going to drive more slowly for them.”
The Dutch government had said in 2013 that it wanted to reduce the size of its goose population back to its 2005 levels which, experts say, would entail the slaughter of 500,000 birds. The state pays tens of millions of euros to farmers every year to compensate for damage to crops caused by greylag, barnacle and white-fronted geese.
Schiphol and Noord-Holland have been in a long-running fight for approval to gas thousands of geese in the area around the airport, one of the biggest in Europe, despite a court ban.
A spokesman for the Rijkswaterstaat, which is responsible for road safety, told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that it was constantly erecting fences to keep animals off the roads but that this was impossible for flying birds. “We cannot quite avoid that entirely,” the spokesman said.
