NYC officials plan slaughter of 2,000

Canada geese and goslings. Credit: M. Wanner

New York City plans to trap and gas as many as 2,000 Canada geese this summer. Why?  What a good question.  They want to attempt to avoid the type of collision that caused an airliner to go down in the Hudson River.  Not stop a collision, just attempt it.

Aviation officials have culled (that’s fancy speak for kill needlessly) bird flocks on airport property for years.  This new plan, which takes place in about a week or so, marks a major expansion into other parts of the city.  And to make it fair, the slaughter will be timed with molting season, when the geese can’t fly.

Bird and airplane strikes have been increasing steadily for the past 17 years.  In fact, according to FAA statistics, airplanes struck 1,738 birds in 1990 alone.  By 2007, the number climbed to a staggering 7,439.  So what’s causing the increase?  Some say it’s due to the success of the conservation movement.

But is it?  Over the past 40 years the US populations of bobwhites, Eastern meadowlarks and 18 other species have decreased by more than half.  Then, at the same time, larger birds like vultures, gulls, pigeons and Canada geese have grown.  It’s a basic equation really.  The losing species live in forests, meadows and farmlands – which we all know is being destroyed by strip malls and housing developments.  But the winners?  They adapt to our concrete landscape.  They eat our roadkill or our garbage and multiply like mad.  So no surprise here when it’s discovered that the birds who are thriving are the ones being hit with planes.  See?  One part human killing habitat, mixed with create perfect breeding ground for larger birds, equals an aviation mess that humans want to fix by killing more stuff.  Amazing, really, how our minds work isn’t it?

There is a small group of “professionals” out there who study this very problem and have actually come up with some interesting solutions.  Some use Doppler radar that measures the amount of birds in the air.  Or, they will allow mature red-tailed hawks (that somehow know not to go near the planes) keep nests near the runways to scare off other species out of the area.  They can even cut the grass at a certain height to dissuade starlings from creeping around on the runway infields.  The height of the grass screws up the visual interflock (?) communication.  That’s…amazing.

But, of course, they can’t seem to stop the birds that get involved with the planes.  You know, the ones we promote with our bulldozers, landfills and the like.

So we are left with a problem.  It’s not unlike other human / animal relationship.  The humans create an environmental problem, which in turn creates a problem for the animals.  No one can figure out how to solve the problem (stop urban sprawl?) so the solution is to kill the animals.  Haven’t we tried that before? When will we learn?