Urban-suburban Canada geese (Branta canadensis) create nuisance problems at their foraging sites by littering them with feces. An ecological approach to the problem involves inducing the geese to use alternate foraging sites by reducing the attractiveness of problem sites. This can be accomplished by reducing the forage quality at the nuisance site by not fertilizing and infrequently mowing the lawn or by replacing the lawn with a less palatable grass species or other ground cover. Further, sites can be made less attractive to geese if they are surrounded by tall trees which make it harder for geese to land or take off, and planting bushes and hedges to reduce a goose's ability to watch for approaching predators. Another approach involves relocating roosting areas to more remote sites so that geese have to expend greater time and energy to reach the problem site.

Distress call playbacks are used as deterrents to keep birds out of areas where they are causing problems. However, the calls often are ineffective, owing to birds' rapid habitation to them. Recent studies on the functional significance of distress calls indicate that adult passerines only distress call when physically constrained and that the calls are designed to startle the predator holding the caller into releasing it. Further, distress calls attract other birds, which approach the caller to acquire information about the predator. These findings suggest that distress calls would be more effective if their broadcast is paired with a predator model that appears to be grasping the caller. Such a pairing should reinforce a bird's fear of the predator model and delay its habituation to the distress call.

Tested the hypothesis that female-female pairings in ring-billed Larus delawarensis and California gulls L. californicus result from a shortage of males in the breeding population, by removing males from one ring-billed and 4 California gull colonies early in the breeding season. The frequency of 4-6 clutches, used as an index of female-female pairings, was significantly higher in these colonies than in nearby control colonies, supporting the hypothesis. Female-female pairings allow females the chance to breed when they are unable to obtain a male partner. -from Authors

Fertility control in wildlife is emerging as a potential management tool. Published research on feral horses, deer, rodents, and rabbits suggest an effective agent producing reversible infertility in these species could be developed. Furthermore, anecdotal reports suggest that infertility can be induced in a greater array of species. In this paper, the authors review methods of fertility control being studied for application in wildlife and focus on their studies designed to evaluate the effectiveness of fertility control agents in coyotes (Canis latrans). Immunocontraception using porcine zona pellucida (PZP) is currently the most promising method of fertility control in coyotes the authors have studied. This is consistent with results from other species. However, the vital question of whether any fertility control agent can reduce livestock losses due to coyote predation will require more research.