Generally a migratory bird, the Canada Geese that call Camanche home, have now become resident migratory birds, meaning they may fly from pond to pond in the general Ione area but then head back to home base, the shores of Lake Camanche. This is where the problem begins, on the shores of the Lake Camanche Reservoir. The geese live and eat on the shores of the lake. As the water level rises in the spring it covers over the habitat of the geese and in turn, washes their waste matter into the water creating high levels of e-coli and coli form bacteria in some sections of the lake. Bolton explains that this is not really a goose population issue, but instead a water quality issue. Bolton states that in order to find the source of the e-coli in the water, East Bay MUD took several steps, including the study of the river channel under the lake, the impacts of cattle grazing on the shores, and finally an expensive DNA analysis of the bacteria in the water.

The culprit was identified, through the DNA analysis, with a 90 percent certainty to be the geese.Purdue University lab, that some population controls on the Lakes’ geese would be warranted. Now East Bay MD officials face another obstacle to solving the water quality issue- bureaucracy in the forms of the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the California State Fish and Game. Under federal rules removing some of the goose population from the lake, through legalized permitted hunts, required permits from the California State Department of Fish and Game. Previously, this was a matter handled by the Federal Government. The State of California, however, stated that they can not permit hunts because of laws all ready on the books in California. In other words, East Bay MUD is caught between the feds- saying you must go to the state- and the state saying “we can’t allow it”. The only other option was to hunt the geese during hunting season and by the time all of this was worked out Bolton had 2 weeks to organize a contract hunt by a specialized hunter for the geese at Camanche.

In the last week of January 2007 192 geese were removed from the population at the lake- but did it make a marked difference? “It’s hard to quantify a difference” states Bolton, “In December of 2006 we counted 800 geese. After the hunt we counted 1200” he says. Although he does qualify those numbers by stating that because of the local migratory habits of the birds it is difficult to get an accurate number for the geese in the area. Next year says Bolton East Bay MUD is considering more efforts during the upcoming legal hunting system to help with resolution of the issue. East Bay MUD then determined, after the testing by both their own lab, and the