Prospect Park By ISOLDE
RAFTERY
Nearly 400 Canada geese and goslings that had been living at Prospect Park were captured and euthanized last week as part of an ongoing effort to reduce the goose population in the New York City region.
Early on Thursday morning, wildlife biologists and technicians descended on the park and netted the birds. The biologists, who work with the wildlife services division of the United States Department of Agriculture, then
packed the geese two or three to a crate and took them to a facility where they were gassed with lethal doses of carbon dioxide, said Carol A. Bannerman, a spokeswoman for the wildlife services division.
The wildlife specialists had taken advantage of the fact that the birds were in the middle of molting season, when they shed their feathers and are unable to fly. On Monday morning, only four geese were seen out on the lake
in Prospect Park, according to one nearby resident, and it was not clear if they had avoided the roundup or arrived in the days since it occurred.
Last summer, 1,200 geese from 17 sites around the city were euthanized. The authorities have been trying to thin out their ranks since two geese flew into the engines of US Airways Flight 1549 in January, 2009, causing it to
splash down in the Hudson River. Everyone on board survived.
The absence of the birds was noticed by park enthusiasts and landscapers, though officials at Prospect Park were not notified of the specifics about their removal. Two of the park’s birds gained some notoriety because of
their disabilities – one was missing the top part of its beak
neck.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/nyregion/13geese.html?hp
As the geese were most likely in the area long before man had learned to fly, it is the owners and users of the airports that should have been euthanized, not the geese.
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