No swan song yet for swans along St. Joseph River in Elkhart and Cass County

Some residents want to kill them while others aren't ready for that

November 22, 2010|By ED ERNSTES WSBT-TV Reporter

ELKHART — Some Elkhart homeowners living near the St. Joseph River are seeing a growing swan population on the waterway.

They're not causing any major problems now, but several lakefront property owners in Cass County say they are now seeing too many. They want to kill some because they're becoming a nuisance.

Elkhart is not quite ready to go that far in dealing with them.

On any given, day you can find dozens of swans on the upper St. Joseph River. Several years back, Elkhart Mayor Dick Moore didn't see any. He lives near the waterway.

This past summer, on one given day, I could count 60 swans just out in front of my home, there on the river,” Moore said. “They raise their young there. So we're seeing a lot of them."

Some have been known to be aggressive, when people get too close to those with a family in tow.

Ed Anderson, who lives near the upper St. Joe River, said, "I know boats bother them. The jet skis bother them, and they are a very aggressive type of bird, that somebody could possibly get hurt by them.”

A couple years back, Frank Lucchese was out on jet skis with his wife when he went to retrieve a baseball cap she had dropped.

“There was a family of swans there,” Lucchese said. “The father swan decided to, he wanted to chase me and when you see a bird with a 10-foot wing span running across the water, you don't hang around too long to see what's going to happen”

WSBT-TV talked to some homeowners who live along the river. Whether they live along the upper or lower St. Joe, they say they have noticed an increase in the swans’ numbers, but aren't sure if they want to take any drastic measures, to thin them out.

|

|

|