A contentious plan to kill a flock of Canada geese in Nackawic may be scuttled after the Canadian Wildlife Service has decided not to help with the cull.

The small, western New Brunswick town applied for a permit to cull the birds last month.

Town officials had grown tired of a flock of roughly 300 Canada geese fouling its waterfront park, which is home to the world's largest axe, with their droppings.

The Canadian Wildlife Service approved the cull, which still stands.

But Randy Wilson, the parks co-ordinator for Nackawic, said the organization's officials have changed their mind about directly taking part in the cull.

"Without their knowledge and support, we really don't have the expertise locally. So we've been forced to find alternate arrangements and as you can well imagine, there's not a lot of that expertise out there," Wilson said.

Wilson said the most humane way to kill the geese is to trap them, move them to another location and break their necks.

The town has been searching for someone else to help execute the cull, but hasn't found anyone who is qualified.

"We're really in a time crunch because pretty soon the geese will be flying and once they are flying you're done, you're dead in the water so to speak," he said.

Wilson said if the cull doesn't happen this year it may not happen at all.

A new council will be elected in Nackawic next spring and he's not sure if it will support the effort to clean up the town's waterfront.

Nackawic was required to demonstrate that it had a long-term management plan to deal with the problem geese before the wildlife service approved the kill permit.

The town was planning to plant rose bushes and other shrubs along the waterfront, which would alter the habitat so geese will be less likely to return.

Nackawic received a permit to cull the geese in 2010 but it dropped those plans after public pressure.

New Brunswick has a breeding population of 7,000 Canada geese, roughly 1,000 more than the maximum conservation limit of the Canadian Wildlife Service.

The rise in New Brunswick's geese population may be traced back more than a decade ago.

The city of Toronto had a problem with too many Canada geese fouling its lakefront property in 1997.

So the city rounded them up and the New Brunswick government agreed to introduce a few dozen of the birds into the province's bird population.