Canada Geese Killed to Clear the Air

SHIPPING OUT: Canada geese in a crate being shipped away from Randall's Island in June 2009. (Robert Guadagna of Geesbusters)

NEW YORK—Any day now, activists with a close eye on city parks are expecting to see a team of goose catchers swoop in to take a large portion of New York City’s Canada goose population off to a slaughter house in Pennsylvania.

Since two Canada geese collided with the engines of U.S. Airways flight 1549 in 2009, forcing an astounding emergency landing in the Hudson River, the city has culled the population every summer. In 2009, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) killed 1,235 Canada geese and in 2010, they gassed 1,676 geese in New York City.

Culling will soon begin again this year, as the birds remain landlocked during molting season. The USDA will help the city move the majority of geese within a 7-mile radius of the airports to a slaughter house in Pennsylvania equipped to process the birds for a hearty feast at the local homeless shelters.

Gabriel Willow, an avid birder and bird-watching guide for the New York City Audubon Society, is not convinced this is the right way to handle the situation.

“After geese fledge, most young seek territory of their own,” explained Willow. “Birds are going to wander. Even if we remove the geese, more are going to move in; you would have to wipe out the entire species,” remarked Willow.

In his opinion, other birds such as hawks and eagles also pose a threat, but he says the answer is to train pilots and build better planes, not to kill birds. Willow points out that it was the quick thinking and skill of flight 1549’s pilot, Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger that brought the plane down safely in the harbor.

Since the USDA began culling the goose population and using other means of population control around airports, the number of airstrikes has decreased even as the total population has increased, said Carol Bannerman, a USDA public affairs specialist in a phone interview. She also noted that Canada geese pose a particular threat because they travel in flocks.

Methods of population control that do not involve killing hatchlings or live birds include scaring the birds off with pyrotechnics, modifying the habitat, or capture and release. Bannerman says the birds will not stray far from their original stomping grounds, however, making such efforts ineffective.

She excitedly explained that headway is being made toward using lighting patterns and colors on planes that will alert birds and keep them clear of the flight path.

Patty Adjamine, a concerned goose-lover, contests that residential Canada geese, the ones that live here in New York rather than the migrating species, do not fly very high and are not a risk. She stood with several others by City Hall Park on Thursday in a continued effort to prevent the imminent “massacre.”

Bannerman counters that large resident populations attract migrating birds to pop in for a visit on their journey. She also pointed out that 68 percent of all strikes occur lower than 500 feet altitude and 46 percent occur during summer months when only residential birds are around.

Adjamine was drawn to protest out of compassion for a family of birds in Central Park she has come to know well.

“They mate for life and a goose will grieve if his partner is killed,” said Adjamine. She hates to think of the social animals she has come to love being killed or mourning the loss of a loved one. She proceeded to describe transport conditions witnessed during goose removal in previous years.

“They put six or seven in a crate, in a hot truck in the summer. A lot of them are going to be dead by the time they get there, just from terror, stress, heat, [and] overcrowding,” lamented Adjamine.