Canada geese won’t be rounded up at Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park this year because they are too few in numbers.

Washington Wildlife Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has rounded up the Canada geese on Lake Washington for several years under an agreement with local cities.

There are fewer geese in the Puget Sound area due to improved efforts to keep the population down, said a USDA official.

“Because of cities taking a goose-management approach, they’re managing to keep the geese population at an acceptable level,” said Ken Gruver, assistant state director for Washington Wildlife Services.

Too many geese in one area pose a health and safety issue to humans because they can cause disease.

Back in the mid to late 1990s there were several thousand geese in the Puget Sound area. These Canada geese did not migrate out of the area but stayed instead and multiplied in predator-free parks and private lands.

A landowner has to request their removal from the federal agency in order for them to come out and remove the geese.

The services cost about $43 an hour for materials and labor, Gruver said.

The City of Renton used to have a private company come out in the past and interrupt the geese’s habitat with dogs. Because of budget cuts, the city can’t afford it any more, but it has an interlocal agreement with nine other cities for an annual goose round up by the USDA’s Wildlife Services.

How many geese are removed from a property depends on the landowner, who may not want all of them removed, said Gruver.

Usually it doesn’t take a long time to remove the geese, about an hour, he said.

Geese are usually removed at this time of year because they are molting and flightless.

Agency crews will go where the geese are with a portable nylon six-foot-tall wall of netting in a v-shape that gets narrower and leads to a portable holding pen.

The geese are killed using carbon dioxide, a euthanizing technique approved by the American Veterinarian’s Association, he said.

The geese are disposed of in a landfill because there aren’t many uses for their meat. There isn’t a lot of meat to begin with because they are molting. Although officials have tried to donate the meat, there aren’t a lot of shelters that would take it because it’s not USDA approved.

This year, geese at Coulon will be spared this fate.