Not a natural landscape to begin with
The Council's decision to remove Lake Daylesford's geese prioritises naturalistic ideals over the pleasures of Daylesford's mix of natural and man-made elements. The lake is unnatural, the dam having been constructed in 1929. So are dogs, the peacocks at Jubilee Lake and the beautiful North American conifers which line the lake and dominate the botanical gardens.We walk around the lake most days and have never seen the geese attack anyone or other birds. They are sometimes noisy and aggressive with each other. Nor have we seen anyone cleaning up their poop on the paths or jetties. The geese interact with visitors who sometimes feed them.
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They are a popular and arguably iconic part of Daylesford, the subject of hundreds of images on the Web. Black swans also befoul the jetties and can be aggressive towards people. Most of Lake Daylesford is too deep for them to feed or build their mound nests.
A few have resided there for months at a time.The council seems keen to create a neat, buttoned-down, and at times brutalist aesthetic, bulldozing the meandering fairy path at the southend of the lake and installing brusque black signage and incomprehensible columnular rows of wooden poles. These costly"improvements" are at odds with Daylesford's special qualities which are idiosyncratic and generally unplanned.
Tina and Robin Whittle, Daylesford
Removal needed, consultation poor
Consider this scenario: 'The fat white foreigners moved in and drove off the slim-necked black natives'. Where have we heard that before? The present furor over removal of geese at Lake Daylesford is unfortunate and could have been largely avoided.
I have lived on the lake for fifty years; it is literally my backyard. My mother was a keen bird-watcher; as a boy I did a yearly census of the swans with her. At some point in the mid-1980s, a single goose, nicknamed Fred, moved in with the swans and used to tend the cygnets for them. A few years later there were five geese. Then thirteen, for a long time, then twenty, thirty...by now the swans had left, because the geese, whilst charming in their way, are aggressively territorial. I'm fond of them, but the swans actually belong here; the geese have indeed been here for more than thirty years, but the swans were here from time immemorial, and cannot co-exist with the geese, who chase them off.
The removal is absolutely in order, but council's failure to consult with the public was woeful - and typical. They repeatedly spring unannounced changes on townsfolk, then act surprised and hurt when people react. It is embarrassingly unprofessional, and greatly degrades public confidence in them. It is entirely avoidable; do better. Lastly: the protesters have really missed the mark here. Where were they three years ago, when council contractors destroyed all the willow groves in nesting season, leading to the unnecessary deaths of dozens, perhaps hundreds of native birds and mammals? Why is it that only the charismatic, picture-postcard creatures get them talking? I don't need an answer, but I hope they'll think about it themselves.
Toby Some, Daylesford.
A gaggle of bureaucrats
It is axiomatic that if engineers and bureaucrats are tasked with building a road across a field, the route will inevitably have to take out the solitary tree.
In three decades, here I have sat out on the porch and watched the birds in their ever-changing hierarchy. At different times, different birds become dominant. That is nature.
Now, the MBA inspired bureaucracy of Hepburn Shire Council has decided that it must interfere with the natural order of things by capturing the geese and sending them off to some other place; from where they will probably form a skein and fly back. Will the bureaucrats then decide the only solution is euthanasia?
Deposits of scat by the geese are part of the cycle. Insect, ants, beetles will process that and return benefits to the environment. The black swans will find their own place of sanctuary, away from the geese.
But no, the geese that run the show in Council do not want to cede control to nature and the Councillors are blinded by the bureaucrats' faux science. Biodiversity does not come by removing a species.
Brian Hawkes, Hepburn Springs
Enlightened decision
Council's decision to remove domestic geese from Lake Daylesford is enlightened. It is consistent with its Biodiversity Strategy, a document produced after exhaustive community consultation.The days of introducing exotic animals into public land have surely passed, for the dire consequences are just as surely known. The lake is not a private zoo or farm yard; it is a public reserve and its native inhabitants will now be protected from the capricious dumping of animals, be they geese, carp, goats, turkeys, or whatever other species some individual may, purely on a whim, inflict upon them. I look forward to the day when the black swans return to the lake; they have been missed.
Greg Pyers, Daylesford