By Andra Bryan Stefanoni

news@joplinglobe.com

PITTSBURG, Kan. — Local residents have made feeding the ducks and geese at Lakeside Park a form of entertainment for at least four decades. But doing so has contributed to overpopulation and health concerns, officials say.

Jeff Wilbert, director of the Parks and Recreation Department, will request at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting that the city take steps to relocate a large number of waterfowl at the park.

“For years now, there’s been an overabundance of ducks and geese at the park,” Wilbert said Friday. “The best count I could get is that there are more than 200 of a variety of species, and you literally cannot walk around the sidewalk without watching every step you take.”

He said that is coupled with concerns by some residents who say the ducks have become a nuisance in their yards, and with concerns by state biologists and health officials, who say park visitors and the pond’s fish are at risk.

“I asked Janice Goedke (with the Crawford County Health Department) to go out and take a look, and she said it definitely is or could become soon a health issue because of the fecal matter,” Wilbert said.

City Commissioner Marty Beezley said she has fond memories of walking her children to the park from their home a few blocks away and making feeding the ducks a family activity.

But that was a few decades ago, and Beezley recalls that there wasn’t a great population of ducks at that time. She said that while the ducks and geese are “a landmark” for Pittsburg, she now can smell the pond from the street as she passes the park on her morning walking route.

“While it’s a sad thing to have to relocate them, I was thinking on the way home, that park was built as a people park, not a wildlife refuge, way back when,” Beezley said. “We need to keep that in mind. It’s kind of worked into something that I don’t think we planned for.”

Tom Glick, with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, said an unnatural feeding situation has caused a chain reaction. Humans bring in loaves of bread to feed waterfowl above and beyond what the birds normally would eat. That has caused an increased amount of fecal matter, which has caused high levels of nitrates in the pond.

“It’s very polluted, and could affect both fish and people,” Glick said. “As organic matter such as waterfowl feces decomposes, it binds up oxygen to help in the decomposition process. That lack of oxygen means fish start dying and decomposing, and it causes it to be worse and worse until the fish are all gone and the water is a mess.”

Glick said he remembers that when he first came to Pittsburg in the 1980s, there was a “fish kill,” or similar situation, at Lakeside Park.

“We had to use aerators to put oxygen back in the water,” he said. “Nowadays, I wouldn’t eat a fish out of there.”

Wilbert is recommending that Glick reduce the population to about “30 or 40 ducks and geese,” a population that he said the pond “can handle.”