Ah, For the Price of an Airline Ticket!

Disappointing piece from today's Daily News.

It portrays our city parks as defenseless in any kind of opposition to goose slaughters other than eliminating the birds from the parks via dogs, vilifying bird feeders, egg oiling and habitat modification.

Seems however, that the end result is the same: No Canada geese in the parks.

Didn't realize we live in a dictatorship where federal government (in collusion with airline industry) does what it wants unless we (local jurisdictions) find other means to "get rid of the animals."

Last night's "community meeting" at Prospect Park was more like the threat alluded to above than any real discussion of the geese or even how many are actually in the park. (From a flier given out last night: "Accurate population numbers for Canada geese at Prospect Park are currently unavailable." [emphasis supplied])

Tupper Thomas of the Prospect Park Alliance headed up the meeting and basically outlined the various strategies for discouraging or chasing Canada geese out of Prospect Park.

The message was clear: "Either we take these means to keep population of geese down or the feds will come back next year and cull them."

Of course, Ms. Thomas would not provide an actual number of geese that would be deemed "acceptable" or safe to live at Prospect Park.

We can presume that means either none or very near to none.

Nor, did Ms. Thomas offer any remorse, regrets or even opinion regarding the roundups and gassings that were allowed to occur to almost 400 of the park's Canada geese last summer.

She did however, assure us she was an "advocate for animals, especially chipmunks."

Perhaps I am being too judgmental or harsh towards Tupper Thomas. She, after all, did not orchestrate or call for last summer's goose carnage at Prospect Park. The federal government (specifically, Dept of Interior, Fish and Wildlife) did, as well as the Mayor of New York. (All of these were in collusion with FAA.) Thomas simply acquiesced with nary a whimper or protest. In fact, Thomas was apparently on "vacation" when the actual gassings occurred.

Although the excuse given for last summers "gooseicide" at Prospect Park was "airline safety," it has since been proven that Prospect Park is outside the 7-mile radius from airports that would have allowed such wanton killing to occur without notice to the community, use of alternative first and Environmental Impact Statement.

So, the strategy has changed.

Instead of "airline safety" used as excuse to eliminate geese from Prospect Park, derogatory and mostly false labels are being slapped on the animals such as "aggressive, polluting or keeping out other birds." Ah, that only we could accuse the geese of kidnapping little children! (One can be sure there are some government hackies working on how to spin that one.)

Still, the true bottom line to all this carnage and elimination of wildlife is yes, mostly the Airline industry.

That almost 1700 Canada geese were rounded up in the NYC area last year and transported to Kennedy Airport for gassings lays evidence to that fact.

Plans are already in place to expand airline pathways over New York City, as well as fly the planes lower over public parks and other areas. Geese fly and they are over 4 Lbs.

Recently in Canada, they passed a federal law requiring planes to fly at slower speeds when arriving or departing from airports in order to avoid birds strikes.

But, we aren't even discussing that here.

Instead, it is "What can we do to get rid of the birds before the Feds (in collusion with FAA) come in again with their plastic ties, hired thugs and gas chambers?"

Ah, for the price of an airline ticket!

How truly, truly pathetic. -- PCA

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