Are They Coming for the Canada Geese in your New York City Park?

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Prospect Park's Beautiful Canada Geese This Morning (Only 23 Remain)

Washington Square Park doesn’t have any Canada Geese but many city parks throughout the five boroughs do. But, if it’s up to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, not for long.

Mayor Bloomberg has signed off on gassing and slaughtering Canada Geese in NYC Parks for the third year in a row.

Things you need to know:

1. Resident Canada Geese are NOT a threat to Airline safety. That is a ruse put forth by the Mayor and a lie spread by the media.

2. The NY City Council and other City officials should rebuke Mayor Bloomberg for directing the needless slaughter, and NYC Parks Commissioner Benepe for signing off on it.

3. Let your NY City government representatives hear from you. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio: (212) 669-7250, ; your City Council representative.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, upon invite of the Mayor, came to our town in the dead of night and rounded up the resident Canada geese living in our City’s parks. The USDA hired minimum wage workers to bind their legs and bring them to a gas chamber set up at Kennedy airport.

1,676 geese throughout the five boroughs were killed in 2010, 1,235 Canada Geese in 2009. The round-up and slaughter of the geese for 2011 will begin ANY DAY NOW — unless we stop it.

They are planning to kill around 80% of our area’s geese. They will be rounded up along with their flightless goslings, cornered, trapped and then either gassed or have their heads chopped off (the “humane” solution).

The City is posturing as a good-will agency by killing our geese and saying they’ll feed them to the needy living in Pennsylvania — but mercury and other toxins found in geese likely prohibit any consumption.

Mayor Bloomberg felt he had to do something, no matter how irrelevant, when Flight 1549 went down in the Hudson. He didn’t want to be seen as impotent against the forces of nature.

Nature? Really? Two days A week BEFORE the “Miracle on the Hudson,” a pilot had reported mechanical problems with that very same aircraft. In interviews, Captain “Sully” Sullenberger expressed his biggest fears for air safety: budget cuts, sub-par maintenance and shockingly low salaries for professional pilots. (New York magazine, February 2009.)

Ever since Ronald Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers Union in 1981 enabling the airline companies to cut salaries and increase workloads for over-worked and exhausted personnel, they’ve looked to divert blame for accidents away from the companies’ own failures to maintain high standards. The truth is that resident geese DID NOT bring down flight 1549; the plane collided with migratory geese according to the Smithsonian Institution which analyzed the feathers. Rather than bring aircraft up to standard, the Mayor has decided to exterminate a population of birds, which – overwhelmingly – our communities treasure.

Now Mayor Bloomberg sees fit to exterminate an entire population of geese — even though resident geese do not interfere with airplanes and some areas, like Prospect Park, are outside the 7-mile radius that the Feds have imposed (at Bloomberg’s request) for the killings. (The City and Port Authority contract with the USDA to do the dirty work.)

And what About Alternatives? There are many, such as using Merlin Radar, altering light patterns of planes to prevent bird-plane collisions, studying migratory patterns and avoiding those bird corridors and times of day, and more. But they are not being used — it’s easier to kill.

links to be added.

See more at Humane Revolution.

Thanks to Mitchel Cohen of the Brooklyn Greens for his help in preparing this information!

Photo: David Karopin

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