A little more than a decade after a coalition of municipal, state and federal agencies clamped down on waterfowl feeding in Anchorage, the feeders have returned in force.
The concerted effort to stop waterfowl feeding was aimed at reducing urban duck and goose numbers in the wake of a disastrous mid-air collision. Twenty-four people died in September 1995 when an Air Force E-3 Sentry crashed after flying into a flock of Canada geese shortly after takeoff from Elmendorf Air Force Base.
Although air safety was the primary impetus, reducing the number of waterfowl undoubtedly reduced water pollution in the city. Now, with feeding on the upswing, local ponds are once again seething with a foul concoction of fecal coliform and other bacteria that can make people sick.
An example is Fish Creek, approximately 4 miles long, all of it flowing through (or under) the middle of Anchorage. The Anchorage Waterways Council, which has monitored water quality in Fish Creek since 2004, recently found high levels of fecal coliform in Cuddy Family Midtown Park.
Successful prevention program
Few Anchorage residents remember a time when the city's ducks and geese were wary of humans.
Canada geese were rare or nonexistent in upper Cook Inlet prior to the 1964 earthquake. Beginning in the mid-1970s, their numbers climbed rapidly and geese started nesting and rearing young throughout the Anchorage Bowl. Canada geese eat grass. The explosive growth of Anchorage dramatically increased their food supply, especially for geese habituated to humans. Anchorage inadvertently created a goose paradise through the juxtaposition of wetlands for nesting, lawns for feeding and lakes for molting and rearing goslings. At the time, goose predators were scarce in Anchorage.
As geese started appearing on city ponds and lakes, people began feeding them, making the city even more attractive and increasing their comfort levels in a human-dominated environment. People tossed food wherever the birds congregated, including completely inappropriate locations like along busy roads.
Spenard Lake and Lake Hood, the world's busiest floatplane base, used to be popular feeding sites.
In the early 1970s, only about 100 Canada geese nested in the Anchorage Bowl, mostly in Potter Marsh. A summer count conducted in 1996 found more than 2,600 geese. From 1974 to 1996, the Anchorage goose population increased at an annual rate of 14.6 percent. A model predicted that barring any interventions – natural or manmade – Anchorage might support more than 19,000 geese by 2007.
It never happened. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, state and federal agencies cooperated to reduce goose habitat around airports and haze geese attempting to feed on airport turf. Hundreds of eggs were collected in wetlands during nesting season and donated to Alaska Native elders. Because geese tend to return to the location where they learned to fly, unfledged young geese were rounded up and released in Susitna Flats State Game Refuge. All of these actions were intended to reduce and then maintain Anchorage's goose population at an acceptable level and force geese to abandon areas where they were most likely to endanger aircraft.
Once the population approached a more acceptable level, egg and gosling roundups ended. An increase in goose predators – for example, red foxes and bald eagles – seems to have helped stabilize goose numbers at 2,000 or less.
One of the key elements of the plan was to stop the public from feeding geese and other waterfowl. A variety of public messages were aired and "no feeding" signs were erected at popular feeding locations.
Efforts undone
One of the most popular sites for tossing handouts to geese used to be a small wetland south of Loussac Library. The wetland was obliterated and the area was greatly enhanced – for geese – by the creation of the Cuddy Family Midtown Park.
The shallow wetland was dredged deeper and expanded into a 2.3-acre pond. A long-buried section of Fish Creek was briefly freed from its corrugated catacomb – urban renewal specialists call it "daylighting" – by diverting it into the ponds. Acres of grassy turf were planted nearby. And the sign that asked people not to feed geese disappeared.
That was more than a decade ago. Within a year, Cuddy park became one of Anchorage's premier duck and goose buffets.
Any waterfowl biologist could have predicted what would happen. The ponds attracted a few ducks and geese, which attracted a few feeders, which attracted more ducks and geese, which attracted more feeders. Now the ponds are brimming hundreds of ecologically handicapped waterfowl that have learned to mooch food from humans.
Instead of foraging for natural foods, ducks and geese loiter about the Cuddy ponds like homeless people in the vicinity of a soup kitchen. People feed waterfowl all day long in the parking lot.
Meanwhile, the grass around the ponds has been trampled by people and waterfowl, which has caused the banks to slough into the ponds. The bike path, footbridge and parking lot are spattered with bird poop. And the ponds have become a cloudy concoction of sediment and everything that squirts out of a duck's cloaca.
In July, Dr. Thomas Eley, a research biologist with Anchorage Waterways Council, dribbled 10-milliliter samples of pond water, about two teaspoons, onto petri dishes, the small, lidded containers that scientists use to culture and identify bacteria.
Water taken from the culvert entering the ponds grew 44 colonies of fecal coliform, 64 colonies of non-fecal coliform bacteria and two "teal" colonies. "Teal" refers to the color of the colony in the petri dish; fecal coliform sprouts blue or purple colonies and non-fecal coliform colonies are pink or red.
Non-fecal coliform can be bad stuff. Enterobactor infections can necessitate prolonged hospitalization. The "teal" colonies need further testing. But they can be bad, too.
"I mentioned the teal colonies to my doctor," Eley said, "and he knew immediately what they could be. 'I hope that you washed your hands after having them in that water!'"
Killing with kindness
It's no secret that the water in Fish Creek is polluted. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation considers Fish Creek one of eight streams and five lakes in the municipality that are "water-quality-impaired."
According to a 2004 report, in the early 1970s three miles of the original stream were filled and covered with residential and commercial development. Most of Fish Creek was diverted through a culvert. At least 47 stormwater outfalls drain into Fish Creek and most of the fecal coliform appear to come from pet and waterfowl feces.
Fecal coliform counts are highest in summer and early fall. An analysis of fecal coliform levels near the mouth of Fish Creek conducted by the Municipality of Anchorage in July 1989 found an average of 171 colonies per 100 milliliters. The report assumed that this represented the general water quality of the watershed at that time.
The state has generally set maximum concentrations of fecal coliform at 20 colonies per 100 millimeters for drinking water and 200 colonies per 100 milliliters for water-related recreation. Multiplying Eley's samples by 10, to compare with the state standards, indicates water entering Cuddy ponds had 440 colonies of fecal coliform, far exceeding both drinking water and contact standards.
But wait. That's the water flowing into the ponds. What happens under the ducks and geese? Eley tested that water too. He found over 900 colonies of fecal coliform, 170 colonies of non-fecal coliform and over 8,000 colonies of "teal" bacteria per 100 milliliters.
In other words, the water in Cuddy ponds is poop soup.
Simple solution
An article written in 2013 for PRB Magazine by Dwayne Adams, a landscape architect and planner with USKH Inc., touted the planning effort that culminated in Cuddy Park. Engineers were searching for a site in Midtown that could store floodwater and runoff from a nearby snow storage area. A lot of lip service was given to improving recreational opportunities and wildlife habitat, but wildlife biologists were not consulted and the engineers won the day.
Adams claimed that the park wasn't attracting much human use until the ponds were created. Writing less than a year ago, he also claimed: "On any summer day, dozens of people are kayaking, floating model sailboats and wading in the pond." I've never witnessed any of those activities, and playing in Cuddy ponds could pose a serious threat to one's health.
Instead of frolicking in the ponds, dozens of people are feeding ducks and geese in and around the parking lot. Egged on by the free food, some birds are getting a little too friendly. Tim Stevens described a recent incident in which a couple with a young child ran out of bread and the geese began giving them the bum's rush. The father kicked the birds away from his daughter.
Everyone's heard wild ducks don't need to be fed. They don't. People feed ducks to scratch a personal itch, not for the ducks' sake. The fact that they may be killing the ducks with "kindness" doesn't seem to matter.
Unnaturally high concentrations of ducks and geese are much more likely to be infected by sick birds. Thousands of waterfowl have died from contagious diseases whose spread was exacerbated by crowded conditions.
Some wildlife problems are hard to solve. This one is easy. The solution is to stop feeding the waterfowl.
If people stopped feeding waterfowl, fecal coliform levels in Anchorage streams and ponds would decrease. Even ducks who linger into winter are capable of flying to open water in Kachemak Bay or Prince William Sound if feeding is curtailed.
Feeding hurts waterfowl. Stopping the feeding will help them. And us.
Rick Sinnott is a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News. Contact him at rickjsinnott@gmail.com