loading . . . Canadian Geese in West Orange Cackling geese, the smaller cousins of the Canada goose, in West Orange on Friday, December 12, 2025.John Jones | For NJ Advance MediaBy AJ McDougall | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
The geese are calm in West Orange. The residents, less so.
Feathers have long been ruffled over how the Essex County township manages its Canada goose population.
But the debate took flight this week, when a council member spoke out against the township’s goose-abatement contractor — a company that has previously rounded up and gassed geese.
Councilwoman Joyce Rudin, who called gassing “a horrific practice” at the Tuesday council meeting, said in an interview with NJ Advance Media that she believes the township needs to cut ties with its longtime vendor, Goose Control Technology.
“Hiring a company with a troubling history of gassing geese and their goslings is not the solution,” she said. “We owe it to our community to explore ethical alternatives.”
A spokesperson for the company did not reply to requests for comment.
New Jersey has spent decades trying to outmaneuver its resident nonmigratory Canada geese. Roughly 63,000 of the birds live in the Garden State year-round, state officials estimated in 2023, the most recent year for which data was available. It is not clear how many of these geese specifically live in West Orange.
The birds’ impact on its habitat is outsized: a single adult goose can produce up to two pounds of waste a day, contaminating ponds and leaving parks a slick, unsightly mess.
Some towns grappling with the issue have turned to well-known deterrent and management tactics — dogs, lasers, fencing, tall grass, and the spring ritual of egg addling, in which workers oil or shake eggs so they never hatch.
These approaches are popular with residents and officials who oppose killing the birds, but can take years to thin a flock.
Other municipalities have turned to “removal,” a service conducted during the summer molt, when the birds cannot fly.
The term is something of a euphemism, as under U.S. Fish and Wildlife rules, any geese that are rounded up must be euthanized rather than relocated. Often, this means herding the geese onto trucks, after which they are euthanized in a chamber with a lethal amount of carbon dioxide.
For that reason, unlike other control methods, removal requires a federal depredation permit issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
New Jersey generally “encourages the use non-lethal methods in conjunction with selective use of lethal control measures,” according to Larry Hajna, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
As a technique, removal has drawn fierce criticism from animal advocacy organizations, as well as backlash from local residents.
In Peapack-Gladstone last year, residents mounted a petition and series of protests that drew national headlines and prompted officials to abandon a planned cull by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Canadian Geese in West Orange Geese in West Orange on Friday, December 12, 2025.John Jones | For NJ Advance MediaA ‘hardcore group’ of birds
Goose Control Technology, which services New York and Pennsylvania as well as New Jersey, has been hired by towns like Edgewater, Spring Lake and Montclair in the past.
The company’s website does not explicitly say it uses lethal methods, but it lists “removal” alongside nonlethal services such as egg addling and laser harassment. Owner Stephen Toth has previously acknowledged that the company sometimes euthanizes geese.
Records indicate that West Orange, a 12-square-mile township of about 48,000 residents, was among the municipalities that contracted with Goose Control Technology for lethal goose removal in recent years.
The township’s contracts with the company from 2023 and 2024 list a $3,000 nonlethal egg-treatment service alongside an optional line item for “Removal of Resident geese” — a lethal service priced at $4,500 and performed “only at client’s request.”
The 2022 contract also offered lethal removal, at $3,500 for up to 100 geese, though it did not include egg treatment.
Invoices reviewed by NJ Advance Media show the township paid $2,750 in 2022, $7,200 in 2023 and $7,000 in 2024, though it is unclear whether the higher totals in 2023 and 2024 reflect the use of euthanasia.
The 2025 contract, which expires at the end of the calendar year, lists only the egg treatment service and does not mention removal.
Removal services were excised from this year’s contract “due to the absence of need for any removals at this time,” Michael Fonzino, the township’s director of health & welfare, said in a statement.
He cited what he described as the “effectiveness of the egg addling” conducted by Goose Control Technology in recent years as the reason for the change.
West Orange plans to stick with the same approach in 2026.
“At this time, the township will not be considering alternative vendors,” Fonzino said.
Rudin believes the township shouldn’t be working with a company with a history of geese-killing, even if it is no longer performing those lethal services for them.
She also questions whether it is necessary to be spending taxpayers’ money on geese management at all.
“The fact of the matter is that we really don’t have a geese problem here in West Orange,” she claimed. “The health department will say it’s a health and safety issue. It’s really not.”
Health and safety problems tend to accumulate as flocks grow, with issues including the spread of bacteria like E. coli and salmonella and aggressive behavior by nesting birds, according to the New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
Resident Laurence Cohen, who often walks by Vincent’s Pond and Crystal Lake, thinks there’s a “hardcore group” of between 10 and 15 birds who call those areas home.
Cohen, a retiree who serves on the township’s zoning board of adjustment and open space committee, opposes euthanasia. Egg addling also strikes him as unnecessarily cruel.
“Geese mate for life and they keep going back to the same place trying to have a baby,” he said. “Just leave them alone.”
Suzanne Aptman, a volunteer leader with the National Humane World For Animals, said that while egg addling can be stressful for geese, who have been known to mourn lost young, it is still “far more humane than just rounding up moms and their babies and gassing them.”
Others argue egg addling ultimately doesn’t solve the underlying conflict: birds returning to attractive areas.
“It just opens up new real estate for new birds,” said Joseph Bello, who owns the Geese Chasers North Jersey franchise. “There’s no end game there, man.”
Canadian Geese in West Orange Geese in West Orange on Friday, December 12, 2025.John Jones | For NJ Advance Media‘More humane, more effective’
If West Orange is to continue geese management, Rudin believes it should model itself after towns like Montclair that have adopted nonlethal tactics — including creating riparian buffers around ponds and hiring trained dog-handling teams like Bello’s to chase geese away.
“There are proven, sustainable options,” Rudin said. “Montclair has successfully employed these methods. Why shouldn’t we?”
Aptman, who lives in Montclair, said the town began exploring “more humane and more effective” options in 2020.
That was when the township first hired Geese Chasers. The regional branch that Bello manages uses 23 specially trained border collies to chase geese off in more than 30 municipalities across Northern New Jersey.
Ahead of nesting season, the dogs will often perform both sunset sweeps and dawn patrols on a daily basis.
“If you give (geese) any big breaks in service, any big spots where you’re not showing up, they’ll take advantage of it,” he said. “You show up every time, at the same time — they get wise to that, too. We’re just doing behavior modification.”
In the years since the dogs came to town, Aptman said, goose reproduction around Montclair’s ponds has dropped sharply.
“In two of our ponds, we’ve had no goslings born anymore,” she said.
Geese Chasers’ municipal contracts are generally more expensive than Goose Control Technology’s, ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 a year depending on acreage and frequency, Bello said.
The West Orange council briefly sought a quote from his company last spring, Bello added, but ultimately chose to stick with its old vendor.
Canadian Geese in West Orange Geese in West Orange on Friday, December 12, 2025.John Jones | For NJ Advance Media AJ McDougall headshot AJ McDougall
AJ McDougall is an enterprise reporter for NJ Advance Media, writing for both NJ.com and the Star-Ledger. She previously covered breaking news for the Daily Beast. Her writing can also be found in Vanity Fair,... more
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