RSS FeedWeekend Birdery: Not Good for the Goose
It has been upsetting for bird lovers to see images of gulf birds coated in oil and to watch the casualty counts climb. As of its July 16 report (pdf), the Fish and Wildlife Service had collected 2,095 dead birds in the Gulf spill region—823 of which were visibly oiled. Another 1,174 visibly oiled birds have been collected alive.
The loss of birds and other wildlife as a consequence of the spill has been tragic, as everyone agrees, but at least they weren’t killed intentionally. One can’t say the same for the massive numbers of Canada Goose that have been corralled and gassed in New York City recently. Nearly 400 in Prospect Park alone were herded to their death last week (they were molting and couldn’t fly away), and another 1,235 were likewise exterminated last summer in different locations around the city.
The geese are believed to present a danger to air travel in the area. And in the wake of the Flight 1549 incident, the city has been determined to cull geese populations within 7 miles of the airports. There is some dispute, however (according to this NYT story), about whether local New Yorker geese pose the same danger as migrating, tourist geese.
Anyway there are better ways to control populations of geese. Relocation and release would be more comforting, but it’s not an option; the Canada Goose, Branta canadensis, has proven so adaptable to human environs that it has made itself into a pest all across the continental United States. Nobody wants more of them. But more humane alternatives like egg addling are available—alternatives which are probably much cheaper and more environmentally friendly than sending hundreds of adult geese to suffocation chambers, double-bagging their carcasses, and dumping them in a landfill.
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[...] to human aviation when their numbers are unchecked. Still it was a bit of a surprise to learn that 400 of them were trapped and exterminated from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park a few weeks ago. Now it turns out [...]