NYT: New York State Plans to Eliminate (capture and gas) 170,000 Canada Geese

[Amerigo Vespucci]

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/state-plans-to-eliminate-170000-canada-geese/?partner=rss&emc=rss

It’s a doomsday plan for New York’s geese.

A nine-page report put together by a variety of national, state and city agencies shows that officials hope to reduce the number of Canada geese in New York to 85,000 from 250,000.

That means that roughly 170,000 geese — two-thirds of the population — will be killed.

The nearly 400 geese gassed to death this month after being rounded up in Prospect Park in Brooklyn — as well as an unknown number of other geese killed in New York City in recent weeks — were but a small part of the ambitious overall goal outlined in the document, which was obtained by City Room.

“The state of New York has close to 250,000 resident Canada geese, which is more than three times the state’s population goal of 85,000,” the report states. It is unknown how many have been killed so far.

The plan, according to a high-level official at the United States Department of Agriculture, was a result of five months of meetings between February and June 2009, after the crash of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. Canada geese hit both of the jet’s engines, causing the splashdown.

Those attending the meetings that yielded the plan included officials from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, the National Park Service and key staff members from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office, the official said.

He said that politicians peppered officials from the Department of Agriculture with questions about the science and asked how many goose strikes had occurred and the danger they posed. They learned that there have been 78 Canada goose strikes over 10 years in New York, and that those strikes caused more than $2.2 million in aircraft damage.

The plan was written with the approval of everyone at that table, the official said, including this paragraph:

“The captured geese are placed alive in commercial turkey crates. The geese would be brought to a secure location and euthanized with methods approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Euthanized geese would be buried.”

[Earth_First]

1. I will admit that there is a resident Canada Goose issue in New York state...

However, this is certainly one of the most draconian solutions I've heard of to date...

[marmar]

25. Michigan also has a huge Canada goose population, but the state's goal....

is to maintain it between 175,000-225,000

[Edweird]

2. Sad. Canadian geese are magnificent creatures.

My soon-to-be ex wife lives in Brooklyn AND is a serious lover of waterfowl - mallards and canadian geese in particular. I know she'll be heartbroken by this.

[RKP5637]

3. Anything in the way of mankind must be destroyed! n/t

[LWolf]

4. This was a local issue.

Geese were over-running a park, fouling it beyond reason, and aggressively "guarding" the park from visitors.

It was a huge controversy, with some residents lining up on the side of the geese, and some on the side of the park. Eventually, 109 geese were killed, butchered, and donated to local food banks.

http://www.katu.com/news/99100554.html

I was at that park twice last week; I counted 15 geese.

Not that there's any shortage of Canadian Geese locally. I get flocks flying over my place a couple of times a day.

[Bobbieo]

8. Donated to 'local food banks' is the only positive response i can give to thtis whole operation.

[LWolf]

37. I was ambivalent about the whole mess.

I don't like seeing them killed. At the same time, when there's enough goose feces that you can't walk paths or sit on benches, it's a problem. When aggressive semi-wild (living in close proximity to people every day) geese attack people who enter the park, and when parents carry kids and are afraid to put them down because the geese are even more aggressive with shorter people...

It's not like you can catch them and release them somewhere else; they have a homing instinct and can fly "home" over remarkable distances.

The park being a "city" park, there aren't many predators to help maintain a natural balance. Any time nature is out of balance, there are problems.

Of course, people are also out of balance.

In the end, pruning the population to reasonable levels AND feeding the hungry was probably the best solution at this time...until we can come up with something better. Goose birth control?

[City Lights]

5. My right-wing neighbor shoots bottle rockets at them

when they come near his property. They don't even have to be on it. Just near it. And he doesn't care whether the babies are with them or not. He sees 'em; he shoots bottle rockets. Yesterday my cats were out on the screen porch and he scared the shit out of them. They came running toward the door and couldn't get inside the house fast enough.

[Posteritatis]

6. He was firing them at your pets?

Sounds like a job for law enforcement.

[City Lights]

21. He was firing them at the geese just off the back of our properties.

And our cats were out on our screen porch. The yards in our neighborhood aren't very deep, so it was somewhat close to the cats. The loud noise is what scared them. We could hear it inside the house with the doors closed and the A/C running, and when I went toward the door, the cats were running toward it to come into the house.

[MicaelS]

7. If it's a choice between geese and people, I choose people

That's just the way it is. Bird strikes, and the threat of same at airports are a serious issue, and we should not need an airliner crashing into a populated area like NYC killing hundreds of people, to have to wait until we do something about the issue.

BIRD STRIKE COMMITTEE USA http://www.birdstrike.org/

Over 219 people have been killed world-wide as a result of bird strikes since 1988.

· Bird and other wildlife strikes cost USA civil aviation over $600 million/year, 1990-2008.

· About 5,000 bird strikes were reported by the U.S. Air Force in 2008.

· Over 9,000 bird and other wildlife strikes were reported for USA civil aircraft in 2009.

· From 1990-2004, USA airlines reported 31 incidents in which pilots had to dump fuel to lighten load during a precautionary or emergency landing after striking birds on takeoff or climb. An average of 11,600 gallons of jet fuel was released in each of these dumps.

· Waterfowl (31%), gulls (25%), raptors (18%), and pigeons/doves (7%) represented 81% of the reported bird strikes causing damage to USA civil aircraft, 1990-2008.

· Over 780 civil aircraft collisions with deer and 280 collisions with coyotes were reported in the USA, 1990-2008.

· In 1890, about 60 European starlings were released in Central Park, New York City. Starlings are now the second most abundant bird in North America with a late-summer population of over 150 million birds. Starlings are "feathered bullets", having a body density 27% higher than herring gulls.

· The North American non-migratory Canada goose population increased about 4 fold from 1 million birds in 1990 to over 3.9 million in 2009. About 1,500 Canada geese strikes with civil aircraft have been reported in USA, 1990-2008. About 42% of these strike events involved multiple birds.

· A 12-lb Canada goose struck by a150-mph aircraft at lift-off generates the kinetic energy of a 1,000-lb weight dropped from a height of 10 feet.

· The North American population of greater snow geese increased from about 50,000 birds in 1966 to over 1,000,000 birds in 2008.

· The nesting population of bald eagles in the contiguous USA increased from fewer than 400 pairs in 1970 (2 years before DDT and similar chlorinated-hydrocarbon insecticides were banned) to over 11,000 pairs in 2008. Over 110 bald eagle strikes with civil aircraft have been reported in USA, 1990-2008. Mean body mass of bald eagles = 9.1 lbs (male); 11.8 lbs (female).

· The Great Lakes cormorant population increased from only about 200 nesting adults in 1970 to over 240,000 nesting adults in 2008, a 1,000+-fold increase.

· The North American white and brown pelican populations grew at average annual rates of 2.3% and 1.9%, respectively, 1966-2007.

· At least 15,000 gulls were counted nesting on roofs in USA cities on the Great Lakes during a survey in 1994.

· About 90% of all bird strikes in the U.S. are by species federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

· From 1990-2009, over 400 different species of birds were involved in strikes with civil aircraft in USA that were reported to the FAA.

[awoke_in_2003]

12. 219 people killed worldwide in 22 years?

Damn killer geese :sarcasm:

[Doeed]

24. If not for the skill of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger

You could have added 155 people to that list in January 2009.

[msanthrope]

27. Damn straight. Welcome to DU!!! n/t

[Doeed]

28. Thank you

for the welcome.

[Lorien]

19. It's not. If we're going to put a value on a species based on it's benefit to other life

then we'd better damn well look in a mirror, because WE are the most destructive species on earth. We have a choice about breeding, consumption and the rest, and we've made the wrong choices. We have no right whatsoever to condemn other species to death because we somehow see them-as you apparently do-as something parasitic that is in "our way". It's disgustingly immoral.

[glitch]

34. +infinity. nt

[customerserviceguy]

29. I'm with you

They shit all over the place, out West, we'd have just shot the damned things. But here in NY, we have to kill them in a kosher sort of way.

[sandnsea]

9. Well they shouldn't bury them for sure

They need to go to a food bank.

And this is what hunting is for. Seems to me there has to be a better solution than gassing 250,000 geese.

[mopinko]

41. +1

they are perfectly good to eat and i can't believe they aren't being sent to food pantries.

i love birds, but these geese have almost zero predators. and they are very territorial in the spring. they can be a huge nuisance.

[glinda]

10. Disgusting. They are also impacted by the oil spill. Why not quit feeding them?

Why not put flags and things that move in the areas where they are? They are many other ways to deal with this.

[marybourg]

15. And all of them have been tried and none of them work. nt

[glinda]

36. link?

[marybourg]

38. Didn't learn this from a "link", but from 46 years of living in N.Y. nt.

[Bobbieo]

11. Eighty years ago when I was growing up on the St Lawrence River in Northen New York SIate,

I had heard about Canada Geese but never saw one until years later in Colorado. Talk about a population explosion!!!

[Historic NY]

13. Its time to deport them.

[krispos42]

14. Hundreds of thousands of goose hunters will pay to do this.

Sooooo... the government decides instead to spend money?


Jeeze, raise the bag limit, remove the capacity restrictions for shotguns, and extend the hunting seasons. If need be, hunt on the airport grounds, too... birdshot isn't lethal past a couple of hundred yards and an airport is thousands of acres.

[aquart]

16. This is ...no. No.

They're loud and alive and too many dead birds in too many places. No. Not now.

[Ignis]

20. It's pretty awful timing, isn't it?

:(

[Alameda]

17. Canadian Goose is delicious.....

To gas them & bury them is ludicrous, bordering on criminal IMHO. If they have already been caught, why not slaughter them and eat them? Donate them to food banks, offer hunting.

[tammywammy]

30. That's what I was thinking, why not use them as food vs burying n/t

[aquart]

33. I suspect they won't be edible the way they plan to kill them.

You know, the traditional mass murder way. I really hate this plan.

[tammywammy]

35. Well, yeah, but I would hesitate to guess there's an alternative way

I wouldn't think a gassed animal is edible, but can't they off them in another way?

[Alameda]

40. Of course there are alternitve methods......with all the homeless

...poor people going to soup kitchens and all...this is sick beyond belief.

[Renew Deal]

18. We must eliminate the Geesean threat

[Lorien]

22. Sick beyond belief. We cause enough harm to wildlife as it is. If we kill them, then

at the very least send them to be turned into food for other animals. Mass murdering animals simply to benefit the whims of corporations shows a level of ignorance and inhumanity that's downright shocking.

[jwirr]

23. Why don't they wait until they see what the results of the migration

to the Gulf will be? One more season shouldn't make that much difference.

[madrchsod]

32. they do`t fly south anymore....

[msanthrope]

26. Bye, Shitbags.......

Seriously, I will soooooo fucking miss you asshole geese shitting everywhere, making every jogging path hazardous and foul.

I will TOTALLY fuckin' miss your displacement of the gentle little ducks that my daughter used to feed, daily.

I will absolutely miss being hissed at and chased because I dared walk to the water's edge and watch the river flow.

I will miss sitting on your foul shit when I want to watch a concert in the park.

I think I'm gonna put on my copy of 'Canadian Bacon', and chuckle evilly, as Dwight Schrute would. If the beet farm had a DVD player.

[madrchsod]

31. here in illinois canadian geese were hunted near extinction by the early 50s

since the 50`s their numbers have exploded. do to global warming canadian geese are going to be around all year here in the north.

[marybourg]

39. Were they eaten? nt.