Updated 5:35 p.m.
How long will Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the NYC Parks Department, the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and the Port Authority (which controls NYC air space) be able to put up a pretense that killing Canada Geese that reside in New York City parks is making our airspace safer? This pretense is giving them license to massacre them for the third year in a row.
When will the media start doing its own research and not just repeat back information pro forma from the Mayor and city agency press releases?
800-900 Canada Geese are scheduled to be killed throughout NYC parks in the coming weeks ; this is on top of the 1600 killed last year and 1200 in 2009. (Prospect Park’s geese, close to 400 killed last year, have been given a reprieve.)
Have they actually looked at any of the research? Animal Welfare Institute analyzed the Wildlife Strikes Database and statistics state that “approximately .013 percent of all take offs and landings struck wildlife. The government claims that only one in five (20 percent) are reported. Yet, assuming this is accurate, even if 100 percent of all strikes were reported, this would still mean that less than .068 percent of all aircraft operations struck wildlife.”
In addition, according to statistics, 45 % of all fatal accidents are due to pilot error. Comforting, eh? There is no category on this database for wildlife strikes. There is “other” which is less than 1%.
It seems it’s a lot harder to address human error and takes a lot more guts to speak out on that than it is to kill some innocent geese trying to go about living their lives.
A report on what happened in Inwood from Suzanne who lives there and wrote this last night:
Dear Inwood friends:
I was out on the peninsula this morning when a convoy of trucks pulled up carrying canoes and plastic crates. It was the people from the Department of Agriculture who had come to capture and kill all of our geese. There were 30 who had made their home here in our park, including the babies.
There were about a dozen geese in the barbecue area and I started to move in their direction to scare them off to try to save them when one of the men told me that if I interfered with the capture, he would have me arrested. If I hadn’t had the dogs with me, I would have accepted that challenge. It would have been worth it to save a few of the geese. But realized that if they took me to jail, they would put Bodhi and Bindu in the pound, so I had to leave as they requested. If my son had been here to take the dogs, I would have accepted the challenge just to publicize this barbarity. (He’s still in Paris.)
I came back about 15 minutes later with my camera, after calling 311 to register my horror with Bloomberg’s office and the Parks Department, but they had already left with all the geese. I also contacted NY1 tv (desk@ny1news.com.) All of the geese were gone, except for two in the far distance.
There is an article in today’s Metro New York about the rounding up and slaughtering of city geese. Check it out at Metro.
If everyone called or emailed to complain about this, perhaps it would make a difference. It’s too late to save them this year, but this is the third year of this policy and maybe we could prevent a repeat of this next year. Let’s do everything we can to stop this cruelty. Please call the Mayor (#212/788-3000), Parks Department and email NY1 at the email address above. Thanks.
A very heart broken Suzanne, Bodhi and Bindu
*********************************
UPDATE: Mayor’s office does not like getting calls and 311 is discouraging people from calling and unclear if they are taking complaints at 311 unless you ask for a supervisor. You can fax Mayor’s office at #212/312-0700.
There will be a protest outside Mayor Bloomberg’s mansion with animal and wildlife advocates and concerned New Yorkers organized by Friends of Animals:
When: Thursday, June 30, 2011, 6pm-8pm
Where: Mayor Bloomberg’s Townhouse: 17 East 79th Street, between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue
**********************************
Previous WSP Blog post: The Killing of the Prospect Park Geese
Thank you for writing about something that can only be described as too painful to absorb.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? ”
William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
“And Everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
How dare the USDA rape our wildlife, rob us of our sanctuaries, violate our shared park spaces, destroy the only natural serenity we can know inside the city walls. “Reverence for Life” is what Nobel Prize Winner Albert Schweitzer preached. Reverence for Life. Now robbed from these helpless water birds and their BABIES. There is a special place in hell for any and every person involved in this hideous act.
Thank you very much for helping to publicize this travesty. After having witnessing the extermination of the geese from our beloved Inwood Hill Park, I am committed to seeing that this never happens again. I am in the process of organizing a mass protest to this senseless killing. Inwood Hill Park is a designated wildlife sanctuary and is beyond the seven mile radius of any airport designated as the “kill zone” by Mayor Bloomberg. What makes this event even more heartbreaking is the fact that the roundup was timed to occur during the molting season of the geese, meaning that that they would not have the adequate feathers to be able fly away and escape. And the goslings had yet to sprout their flying feathers, so they had no chance of escape, as well. The mean spirited inhumanity of this event is hard to comprehend. We must not allow this to happen again.
Suzanne Soehner
If anyone would like to be kept in the loop with regard to the protest being organized regarding this travesty, please contact SaveOurGeese@yahoo.com. Thanks! A Facebook page will be up soon!
Thanks Johanna and Suzanne for your comments (and the poem, Johanna!). So sorry you witnessed that, Suzanne, but it was so important that you did and took a stand and reported on it.
Yes, it must not happen again next year.
Cathryn.