New signs have gone up at Mapleton Park, in an effort to encourage visitors to stop feeding the ducks.
Director of Parks for the City of Moncton Dan Hicks says the duck population at the Gorge Road end of the park has grown substantially over the last couple of years, “To have them congregate in such high numbers the way they do, is not healthy for the animals and not necessarily healthy for the watercourse either where you have large amounts of what ducks leave behind.”
They’ve expanded their ‘Please don’t feed the wildlife’ signage to include Mapleton.
“The animals that do live there should be able to forage and feed themselves in that area. When people introduce artificial feeds, they may be inadvertently adding to some other problems, including parasites and other communicable diseases amongst those animals,” Hicks says.
He adds they’ve seen some visitors bring a 20 pound bag of feed to the park and leave it there for the wildlife.
“At time, we feel like we’re doing the animals a favour by feeding them, but we often create artificial environments that, really in the end, aren’t as good for them as we think they might be,” Hicks adds.
He stresses, incidents of avian flu in the area are also a concern.
The City is just trying to raise awareness at this point, “We’re focusing mainly on public education with signage. That’s our first step. Although, I will remind people we do actually have a Nature Park policy at Irishtown Nature Park where we do actually prohibit feeding of animals there.”
