Hundreds more birds killed at "wildlife refuge"

From the NY Observer:

With all the excitement of the summer and everyone making plans for the 4th, it's unlikely that you will have noticed that some of the city's other residents, our park's native Canada geese, are disappearing.

The continued round-up and slaughter of New York City's geese continued yesterday with the removal and destruction of around 500 geese in Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, which was caught on video by local geese activists Goosewatch NYC.

The cull is part of a larger bird removal program carried out by the United States Department of Agriculture, which has been ongoing since 2009. Another round-up was carried out two weeks ago at Inwood Hill Park, where all but one of the resident geese were taken.

David Karopkin, the head of GooseWatch, said in a statement today that: "I am more committed than ever to fighting these roundups in NYC, and everywhere. It is disgusting and cruel, it doesn't accomplish anything, and it needs to end. "

Mr. Karopkin told us this morning that he was present at the collection of the geese and was threatened with arrest while attempting to document the proceedings.

USDA officials say that the clearing of the geese is necessary in order to prevent air traffic accidents, such as the infamous Hudson Miracle plane crash in 2009.

Mr. Karopkin and associates however allege that the removal of geese is cruel and unnecessary, and that the USDA are guilty of public deception.

The government is apparently trying to nearly halve the Canada goose population in 17 Atlantic states, to 650,000 from 1.1 million.

The geese are loaded onto a truck and taken away:



Now, while I know some of you will say this program is necessary in order to reduce the goose population, the fact is that the program has no effect on the population of the birds nor has it prevented bird strikes. The most common birds to get sucked into planes are starlings and gulls, not geese. This is the government trying to make like it look like they took action when they did nothing of the sort. The geese they rounded up are likely year-round residents that don't fly very high and aren't a threat to aircraft. I guess someone needed a contract. Again.