The Brooklyn Paper has, through a Freedom of Information Law request, acquired a map showing the broad swath of New York City in which Canada Geese can be rounded up and killed. Oddly, the swath of land, which encompasses most of New York City and was created by including everything within seven miles of either LaGuardia Airport or JFK Airport, does not include Prospect Park in Brooklyn, where the most controversial geese culling took place this summer. Also, eliminating geese from a seven-mile swath around the airports is a Sisyphean task, as there are more than enough geese in the surrounding region to constantly repopulate the “kill zones.” Finally, Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, managed by the National Park Service, and bordering JFK Airport, refuses to participate in the slaughtering of geese, making the whole exercise seem rather silly, pointless, and sad.
Link via Gothamist.
It seems to me that the radius around JFK includes the eastern corner of Prospect Park and just touches the lake. Most of Brooklyn Botanical Gardens seems to be within the circle as well. So that may be why they decided to cull the Prospect Park flock.
Whether the cull will reduce airplane strikes is another question. It seems to me that resident geese would just move between their foraging areas and would not fly high enough to threaten airliners at that distance from the airports.
John makes a good point: it’s likely wild migrants that fly high enoug to pose a danger, and no one wants to see a cull of those birds. That said, there should still be “zero tolerance” of the introduced geese.