New York City’s premiere wildlife refuge proved to be no refuge for Canada Geese on Monday morning as federal agents rounded up 711 geese – including goslings – and packed them up for a trip to upstate New York where they will be gassed and their meat will be provided to food banks. Forty more geese were captured at a nearby landfill earlier.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
What happened to raising chickens? Are the agents trying to cull the herd or what?
The worst part of this story is that they’re planning to feed these geese to people! These are birds that live in the water that we birders try to avoid touching! Didn’t they read Corey’s “Ode to Mud”??
http://10000birds.com/ode-to-mud.htm
There really is way too many Geese at JBWR. But, this seems so harsh!
Canada Geese have become the graffeces artists of urban & surburban parks. There are indeed way too many of them.
When are they going to start rounding up the Mute Swans from JBWR? Let’s get a little diversity here. (Seriously, I agree with Renee, this does seem awful in practice though I would gladly endorse some other way to get rid of those geese.)
Some of these comments are quite ignorant. The fact is there are not “too many geese.” There will always be this many geese as long as we provide them with ample habitat and food as Nature Preserve seeks to do in its very mission. In this sense JBNWR works perfectly. What is not perfect is our inability to cope with large migratory birds using the same airspace as our planes. A fine detail radar exists to accurately track these birds in flight, but has not been installed at ANY airport in America due to cost. Also keep in mind that the two geese strikes on airplanes occurred at La Guardia and not JFK. This proves that not only will this tragedy occur again but we are killing geese needlessly. I believe in Karma and let me tell you this one’s going to be a bitch.