The Fairmont Public Works Department started removing some of the dead geese from the shorelines of Fairmont’s lakes on Wednesday. The carcasses began showing up in early December and after testing several of them, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources did confirm that the geese died from Avian Influenza.
Chad August, Assistant Area Wildlife Manager for the DNR had called it a big morality event across the Midwest as the agency received not only reports of dead geese on Budd, Sisseton and Fox Lakes in Martin County but from other lakes around the region.
Originally, the DNR had advised local municipalities and residents to leave the geese where they were, as the lakes are the jurisdiction of the DNR. The expectation was that the carcasses would naturally get scavenged by other wildlife over the time period, but that did not happen to the majority of the carcasses and now the ice out, many of the birds have washed up on the shorelines.
Fairmont Pubic Works staff will continue to retrieve and remove as many carcasses from the shorelines on public properties as possible and they may have to address it from the water by using boats to reach the remaining carcasses.
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