Canada geese have been plaguing parts of Kāpiti. Photo / David Haxton
Canada geese have been plaguing parts of Kāpiti. Photo / David Haxton
A Canada geese culling incident, which saw a house hit by a bullet and pellets and terrified occupants, has led to strict new protocols in the way the Kāpiti Coast District Council manages the culls.
An incident investigation report, obtained by the Kāpiti News through an Official Information Actrequest, recommends three key changes for future geese culls.
They include all culls to be conducted during the day, notification of all residents within gunshot radius, and pest control contracts for each high-risk cull.
Canada geese culling has happened in recent years during the day but on January 28 the council hired a pest controller to carry out a night operation on the understanding only a .223 suppressed rifle with thermal scope would be used.
Only selected residents in Otaraua Park in the former State Highway 1 vicinity in Paraparaumu were notified because of the expected quiet cull, before two experienced pest controllers started late in the evening.
But during the cull, loud gunfire alarmed some residents, and occupants in one house were scared when 20-gauge shotgun pellets landed on the roof and a bullet damaged a window frame and broke a window.
The report said the level of probability the window damage was caused by a .223 bullet was high, and stemmed from a probable ricochet.
The contractor, in an email to the council, suspected the bullet or bullet fragment had ricocheted off something such as a hard surface or pond water, tumbled through the air, and hit the window frame.
They said it was travelling at such a low speed that it had merely dented the soft aluminum frame, resulting in the window breaking.
The recent Canada geese shooting incident has sparked change in council. Photo / File
“Had that bullet or bullet fragment hit a person, in my professional opinion, it would have at most resulted in a bruise,” the contractor’s email said.
And the report said while the difference in angle (for the hunter) was less than 30 centimetres between in-zone firing and high-risk area firing (towards the direction of the house), “it is reasonable to deduce that while all health and safety mitigations were carried out by the contractor, an unintentional lapse in situational awareness was the key cause of the shotgun pellets hitting the roof”.
Police attended the scene and spoke to the homeowners and pest controllers, but didn’t stop the cull as they “were comfortable” with the precautions the contractor had taken.
Police contacted the council the next day stating, according to a staff member, that it was “an unfortunate accident rather than negligence” and they wouldn’t be taking the matter further.
Nonetheless, the gunfire caused the homeowners to feel “terrified and they took cover behind a wall in the house”.
They weren’t alone either. Another neighbour said the shooting sounded like “the Battle of the Somme” and reported finding wounded geese after the cull.
Both residents were concerned they had not been notified, although both were comfortable with geese culling in general, and were comfortable with the past notified culls.
The report found the contributing factors to the incident to be the lack of notification to neighbours, loss of situational awareness by the shooters, the use of a shotgun, an overcast dark night, moving targets, lack of lights in houses and more.
The council believed it was going to be a quiet shoot and were told by the contractor it would be “unlikely to wake someone up”.
They were also under the belief that the .223 rifle was the only gun that would be used, and that the reason for the thermal scope was so the geese would stay on the ground for the shoot.
However, the report said that it seems the contractor was working inside previous (daytime) shoot frameworks, which included the use of a shotgun.
Because of the incident, the report recommends all future culls are to be conducted during the day (not at night), that all neighbours within a gunshot radius of one to two kilometres are to be notified ahead of a cull, and there be an internal checklist/template for each shoot, which covers details such as the time and location of the shoot, the firearms to be used, risk management and site management from contractors, the process for carcass removal, the number of shooters on site, a communication plan, a briefing to elected members and a key stakeholders list determining who needs to know about the cull.
