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NYC To Gas 2,000 Geese To Protect Aircraft
NEW YORK -- New York City plans to trap and kill up to 2,000 Canada Geese this summer in an attempt to avoid the type of collision that caused an airliner to ditch in the Hudson River in January.
The hunt will take place on dozens of city properties within five miles of Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
Aviation officials have culled the bird flocks on airport property for years, but this will mark a major expansion of the effort into other parts of the city, including about 40 public parks.
They can gas all the geese they want locally, but it wouldn't have changed the outcome on the US Airways flight - those birds have been determined to have been migratory geese and were on their migration route, not "local" geese.
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Brian/\/\ You really should not come to Denver. Cold here. And snowy. And cold. Really, just stay away.
They can gas all the geese they want locally, but it wouldn't have changed the outcome on the US Airways flight - those birds have been determined to have been migratory geese and were on their migration route, not "local" geese.
I wonder if anyone has told NYC that - or is this just tawdry PR?
I wonder if anyone has told NYC that - or is this just tawdry PR?
The Audubon Society mentioned it:
Quote:
Bird lovers expressed mixed feelings about the culling program Thursday.
Glenn Phillips, executive director at the New York City Audubon Society, said the Canada goose population in the city and its suburbs has indeed soared to an unnatural level in recent years as the birds have flourished in a habitat with plenty of lawn for grazing and few predators.
But he said he was unconvinced that the kill will make flying safer. There are an estimated 25,000 Canada geese living in the metropolitan area, and killing a few hundred or even 2,000 won't make much of a difference.
The geese from Canada are now required to have passports consistent with the Western Hemisphere Travel Intiative that just went into effect. The need for passports for geese has been noted by Homeland Security, with clear evidence that undocumented non-US birds interfered with domestic aviation and caused the downing of at least one aircraft prior to the rule going into effect. Since the rules have come into effect there have been no incidents of aviation events due to undocumented Canada geese. Secy Napolitano noted that undocumented geese from Canada have been established as the cause of various other incidents, previously ascribed to human terrorists. Observers have noted that passport requirements for humans have thus far had no effect on aviation safety.
are they edible after gas? if not, can i sign up to wack'em and eat'em? sort of like a deer hunt in my suburban neighborhood. does dca have a goose problem? can i sign up to assist the dca goose problem?
They can gas all the geese they want locally, but it wouldn't have changed the outcome on the US Airways flight - those birds have been determined to have been migratory geese and were on their migration route, not "local" geese.
And yet, the geese in and of themselves, whether migratory or the Atlantic flyway population, all present a risk to aircraft. It's been know for at least 10 years that the geese populations in N America present an increased risk - the changes in engine certification standards in advance of the A380 engine certifications certainly recognised this.
The airports have been managing the geese where they can since Air France settled out of court with NY ports over an engine loss on Concord as a result of a goose ingestion.
The risk is from all geese - but migratory birds are protected by the Bern convention, so can't be subject to this kind of cull. At the same time, the next incident might have involved the non-migratory population - it's not just about preventing the last incident, it should be about stopping the next one.
And sorry to say I disagree with the Audobon guy. Targeted culling around airports of resident populations of some species can be extremely effective - and geese have been shown to be one of those. He's lucky, if you couldn't make a big reduction in risk with targeted killing, they might have had to move onto the kind of slaughter associated with other species - like the Laughing Gull cull programme. This way, the city gets to keep some of its birds, but those posing the greatest risk are removed. And hopefully, that knocks the airport risk back a bit, such that we won't see another incident of this sort.
And maybe next time, they'll actually listen to the experts and not wait until after the accident before taking action to manage the bird hazard
