Rally at City Hall Calls for Humane Methods
New York (August 9, 2010) – In Defense of Animals (IDA), an international animal protection organization, will be joined by New York City Council members Brad Lander, Stephen Levin, and Letitia James on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan on Thursday, August 12, at noon, to call for an end to the city’s contract with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to kill all Canada geese within seven miles of NY’s airports. The contract is established in conjunction with the Port Authority of New York.
Also attending the rally will be State Senator Eric Adams, who represents the district that includes Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where, without warning, 400 geese were rounded up and gassed in the early hours of July 8, 2010.
The Prospect Park killings sparked an outcry from local residents, many of whom knew individual geese by name, and relished them as a rare and vital link to nature. That outcry, which has now grown into a full roar of dissent, has since exposed reports of 1,700 Canada geese killed in NYC by the Wildlife Services of USDA over the past year, with plans to wipe out roughly two-thirds of the goose population in New York State. Rally attendees, including the elected officials, are vowing to see the killings stopped.
For decades, state wildlife agencies have been inflating Canada goose populations by releasing them into areas to swell their numbers for recreational hunting. In addition, artificial landscapes, like manicured lawns and golf courses, attract geese to areas where they would otherwise never inhabit.
“This is a manmade problem that demands a humane solution,” said Scotlund Haisley, IDA’s president. “It’s outrageous to annihilate geese because of human error and arrogance. Non-lethal methods allow us to address this problem without killing them.”
Canada geese population control issues can be addressed through a variety of preventive, humane and non-lethal methods, such as with the use of Ovocontrol, a USDA-approved oral contraception developed and refined specifically for Canada geese.
The City and Port Authority claim that aviation safety demands that Canada geese be killed, but ignores the very fact that cities worldwide deal with the problem of birds near airports without exterminating them. The problem of birds colliding with engines is real, but can be dealt with by employing a range of methods, including radar detection, currently not in use in NYC’s airports.
For more information, please visit www.indefenseofanimals.org
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Contact: Barbara Stagno 914.479.5276