Meeting every two years, conference leader Roger Woodruff of USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in Olympia, Wash., said they wanted to try something different this year. "We have a program here (Bird Airstrike Hazard Program) with wildlife biologist Dane Ledbetter, so it seemed like a natural fit for us to come," said Woodruff. "Our purpose is training and education, information exchange and interfacing with cooperatives like the U.S. Navy." Ledbetter works with NAS Whidbey Island's Operations Department as a USDA-affiliate wildlife biologist. "Our work is very diverse," said Woodruff.

Roger Woodruff, state director of wildlife services for the USDA in Olympia, said there's a window of three to four weeks in June and July when geese molt and can't fly. So on June 28, Woodruff's agency herded the Puyallup geese to a pen at Bradley Lake Park and gassed them with carbon dioxide -- the most humane way to kill them, he said. The agency does so at the request of communities where geese are causing problems, Woodruff said. "It's been a difficult issue to deal with," he said. The animals were imported to Washington in the late 1960s and early 1970s in an effort to replace native geese whose nests were flooded by dam projects on the Columbia River. In 2000, there were about 25,000 of them in Western Washington, causing about $1 million in damage annually, Woodruff said. That year, the agency opted for the last resort: catching and killing them. "Boy, that has really, really turned things around," Woodruff said.

From their perspective , what do they have to gain from media coverage? asked Roger Woodruff , assistant_director in Washington state of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services division.Politically speaking , these people are_up for re-election , and they're pretty sensitive about these things , and we have to respect that..

Roger Woodruff, the Department of Agriculture's regional wildlife services chief, said requests for assistance dropped in 2001 - a reversal from the year before, when his agency was unable to respond to all the land managers who asked for it. The resident geese now common in Western Washington cities are a subspecies known as the Western Canada goose.Native to areas east of the Cascades, they normally migrate to the Southwest in winter. They were introduced to Western Washington by wildlife officials who feared they would die out when construction of the John Day and The Dalles dams flooded Columbia River habitat, Woodruff said. The geese aren't much trouble this time of year because many disperse to nest.

The culling means people can now "see and enjoy" the geese, but "not be slipping in poop everywhere," said Roger Woodruff, . Department of Agriculture state director in Olympia.