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The hunting season for Canada geese begins this week. The state is changing the hunting hours to encourage a bigger harvest.

There are two kinds of Canada geese in Connecticut: the geese that migrate north to Alaska and Canada to breed ... and the kind that stick around throughout the year. The population of these resident Canada geese, as they’re known, has grown so much that they’ve become a nuisance in many places... at times causing public health problems. Starting this week goose hunting will be allowed an extra half-hour past sunset. Ed Parker of the Department of Environmental Protection says this won’t affect the migrating geese that haven’t arrived yet. It’s designed to target the resident geese.

“They will come into ball fields like  soccer fields and baseball fields  and golf courses and parks and leave their droppings all over the place  to the extent that it is really difficult to go out and enjoy. There’s also potential water quality problems. Runoffs gets into small ponds and creates algae blooms.”

The change in hunting hours won’t have much of an impact on the growing population of Canada geese in urban and suburban areas where hunting isn’t allowed.