● Canada geese are an invasive species that have detrimental effects on the environment. This includes water pollution and greenspace degradation.

● New Zealand Conservation Trust was concerned if the resident waterfowl species niche was being impacted by the presence of Canada geese.

● Our research aim was to investigate if Canada geese have an impact on resident waterfowl at Styx Mill Reserve (Pūharakekenui).

● We also aimed to compare the effectiveness of different management strategies, by comparing Canada geese population abundance at Styx Mill Reserve to Victoria Lake.

● The methodology we used was recording bird behaviour, and bird abundance.

● Over 9 days we observed Canada geese interactions with resident waterfowl, by recording 3 categories of behaviour: No interaction, Goose retreat, Goose advance.

● We counted each individual bird to record species abundance.

● Our results concluded that there was a significance of no interaction between Canada geese and resident waterfowl at Styx Mill Reserve and Victoria Lake.

● There was no significance between the Canada geese abundance and resident waterfowl abundance at Styx Mill Reserve.

● Styx Mill Reserve has native bankside vegetation, Victoria Lake has grass lawn.

● Euthanasia as a management strategy, shows most promise for long term removal, whilst egg pricking and decoys are effective as a short term strategy.

● A major shortcoming was that our study length was too short, which consequently made our sample size small. This limited our statistical analysis.

● Increasing sample size and study length to an annual period of observation, would increase reliability of statistical analysis.

● Future observation of geese behaviour with offspring around other waterfowl could further test the hypothesis of Canada geese aggressiveness.