Echo Park Lake encampment is gone. So is the fence. The controversy now? Geese

Two years ago, more than 170 tents or makeshift structures encircled Echo Park Lake, a beloved Los Angeles landmark that had became a sprawling homeless encampment.

Then, everyone was in fisticuffs over the fence.

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Now, the fence is gone. The tents are, too. And folks are complaining about something else entirely.

Geese.

Big, aggressive, loud, always-pooping Canada geese.


“I get a lot of emails — mainly now about the geese situation at the park,” Laila Molina, a field deputy for L.A. City Council District 13, told the Echo Park Neighborhood Council this summer when asked if there had been complaints about the chain-link coming down.

Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, who campaigned last year on removing the fence, said in a statement that he “knew that unless taking down the fence at Echo Park Lake was successful, my goose was cooked.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-22/la-me-echo-park-lake-geese-homeless-encampments-fence

Canada geese — which average 3 feet in length from beak to tail — have flocked to Echo Park Lake for years. But lately, they’ve ruled the roost: charging yappy little dogs, scaring children, pooping all over the sidewalk, and pushing out other, smaller waterfowl.

They have wandered into surrounding streets, prompting people to fret on the app Nextdoor that the birds would get run over.

(“They have wings! Geese can fly!” countered one annoyed City Hall staffer who called the geese “the issue everyone is obsessed with.”)