Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge closed? This morning during the annual round up of resident geese that don't fly into planes a USDA employee was heard twice telling David Karopkin of GooseWatch NYC - who was shooting video and photos (above) of USDA personel loading captured geese and goslings into the back of a pick-up truck - that the park is closed. Another USDA employee tells him that the area is closed. According to a press release sent out today by GooseWatch NYC, Mr. Karopkin was threatened with arrest "more than once."
Brooklyn
The annual roundup and slaughter of the region’s Canada geese in the name of human air safety is under way, according to the New York Times.
In the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and the surrounding area Tuesday morning, agents from the federal Department of Agriculture captured geese and loaded them onto trucks, the National Park Service said. (This time of year, geese are molting and cannot fly.)
No numbers were available, but based on a census conducted recently by the Agriculture Department, the target was 500 geese, said Daphne Yun, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service.
Video taken near the West Pond trail area in the wildlife refuge by David Karopkin of GooseWatch NYC and released by Friends of Animals shows workers carrying heavy-looking crates loaded with birds and putting them in the back of a pickup truck.
Hundreds of geese have been removed each summer from parks within a few miles of the area’s major airports and slaughtered — much to the dismay of animal-rights advocates — since 2009, after a US Airways jet was brought down in the Hudson River by a bird strike. The government is trying to nearly halve the Canada goose population in 17 Atlantic states, to 650,000 from 1.1 million.
“The adult geese and babies were squawking loudly in distress” as they were stuffed into the crates, Edita Birnkrant, New York director of Friends of Animals, wrote in an e-mail. “That this is happening in NYC’s only wildlife refuge is stunning.”
In addition to the roundup at Jamaica Bar, which is controlled by the National Park Service, there have been 322 geese captured at city parks so far this year, city environmental officials said.
The number of geese rounded up has been declining, an indicator, officials said, that the population control plan, which also includes tactics to discourage geese from breeding, is a success.
Read More:
New York Times - July 2, 2013 - By Andy Newman
"Annual Goose Roundup?" Is this something the media is telling New Yorkers we have to accept and embrace like the annual marathon or 4th of July fireworks?
ReplyDeleteWildlife massacres are not sporting event or celebration. They will never be accepted by any thinking American with a shread of decency.
Where there is no respect for animal life, no respect for human life as well. It is only matter of time that we take all forms of life as disposable.
DeleteWhat a disgrace to treat a species like this, just because they look and sound different from us, human!
We are and should be damned, until we come to respect all God's Creations.
There aren't enough tears...it defies comprehension that in this oh-so-modern and scientific age animal issues are handled with brutal expediency. There ARE effective, scientific methods, and one thing I REALLY don't understand is what the USDA knows about managing wildlife. There are agencies specific to wildlife---why isn't one of them in charge of this [ and I don't mean of the slaughter but of sensible tactics like egg addling or oiling. It was done with Mute Swans, because theyr'e alien and aggressive to native waterfowl, and their numbers were reduced without trauma and barbarism ].
ReplyDeleteIsrael is a tiny country that sits smack in the middle of many migratory birds and has figured out how to fly planes WITH the birds so as not to strike them.
ReplyDeleteThis is monstrous; worse then the final solution of the 30's and 40's as it is perpetrated for profit and against those that are absolutely helpless.
There will come a time when we look back on these times and how we have treated animals with the same horror as we look back on the dark days of slavery.