Witness to a Massacre

On this long holiday weekend, I updated a couple of things on my Facebook page and while there, noticed a box that indicated, "Notes."

 

"Hm, what's that?" I wondered.

 

Curiously, I opened the box and discovered a number of animal rescue or rights notes posted by friends over the past couple of years.

 

One of them jumped out at me.

 

Apparently, the note was posted last year, but I never noticed it until now.

 

It's written by a Yvette West, a long time advocate for animals and witness to a USDA roundup of Canada geese that occurred on Randals Island in June of 2009.  

 

Ms. West was not on the actual island when the roundup occurred.  Rather, she was walking her dog along the Promenade of Carl Shurtz Park on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when she and others heard the horrifying screams emanating from across the river at 10PM that fateful night.....

 

Rather than describing the note, I called Yvette today, both to fill in and verify details and to request permission to run her full testimony in this journal.

 

Although the testimony is from two years ago, it is as pertinent today as the actual time of the violence because, as has been noted countless times, the goose massacres are still occurring in our city and are planned for next and future years.

 

The questions that need to be asked are, "Where does this all end?  Will there be any geese left to kill next year?"

 

Or, as Audubon Society described the massacres in 2010: "This seems management to extinction."

 

Below, Ms. West's full testimony and note.  Commentary and updates to follow.

 

 

Witness to a Massacre -- by, Yvette West

 

The note below was written by me last year. As you can see the genocide has broadened and without a group monitoring what the USDA and the Environmental Protection Agencies are doing, this "in the night" brutality will continue and worse, broaden. 

Testimony from June 2009:

I was on the Promenade of the East River at Gracie Mansion tonight.  Promptly at 10PM the roundup began. I could hear their screams.  Molting Geese and Goslings screaming and begging for freedom.  Nets placed atop them and who knows what means they were using for the actual slaughter?  A city worker sitting on a bench.   A friend who was walking her dog was sobbing and two girls unsuspecting heard it and starting crying hysterically. I kept thinking about the baby seals and their screams.

 

We need to film the killing to bare witness to this evil.  Which of the larger groups can bare witness? Peta? HSUS? The birds' screams were piercing, relentless and constant. I have never heard screams like this from an animal before and I have heard and witnessed much.

 

These are parents trying to save not only themselves,  but their babies. They are gentle creatures who mate for life and have been resting at these places for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

There is no solution here to be found in their brutal killing.  I oppose our Mayor and his plans to kill thousands of these Canada geese this summer. First and foremost it was migratory birds that interrupted the flight over the Hudson, not resident geese from city parks. There are non-violent ways to safeguard airplanes from collisions with birds.

 

I hope public outrage will convince our representatives to stop this misguided initiative. I urge you all to insist that they employ non-lethal and long term management of the geese. A sweeping eradication is not a long-term commitment to reduce flock growth as without modifying landscapes and waterways that attracted them in the first place, they will remain attracted to the landscape.

The GeesePeace chapters in New York (there are 7 of them) specialize in population stabilization and site aversion and integrate lasting strategies.  I have been advised they have partnered with USDA and are no longer promoting peaceful measures outside of rubbing oil on eggs. For real peaceful solution please explore geesebusters eagle kite solutions.

 

It is particularly inhumane to ambush geese when molting and flightless. Yet that is how goslings and adults will be trapped on municipal properties surrounding Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Even though our Mayor knows there are successful, non-violent methods that have been used nationally to divert flocks resting and growth successfully, he still signs off on mass killings. I urge anyone who can, to film the roundups so we can bare witness to the brutality and show people what our leaders are really made of. Criminals in designer suits.

 

Why aren't they out there witnessing these graceful animals fruitlessly beg for their lives?"   -- Yvette West, June, 2009.

 

Commentary and Update

 

Since Ms. West wrote her testimony, as predicted thousands of other NYC geese have been brutally rounded up and either gassed or sent to slaughter.

 

Although Ms. West was unable to actually see the USDA roundup of geese that occurred on a small island across the river from Carl Shurtz Park, the fact she and others were able to hear the cries and screams of birds being entrapped and captured at least two miles away is astounding and chilling.

 

One can only imagine the actual sights and horrors of the location and event.

 

Due to the fact Ms. West and other witnesses on the Promenade that night contacted city officials and the press the following day to express their grief and outrage, changes were made in 2010 to conduct goose roundups in very early mornings (as opposed to night) to presumably attract less public attention.

 

But, the massacres did not go unnoticed in 2010, either.

 

Citizens around the Prospect Park area in Brooklyn noticed all their geese suddenly gone one July morning in 2010 and rightly suspecting the worst, contacted the New York Times which then exposed and covered the USDA goose killings in some detail.

 

Although Ms. West did not know how the geese were actually killed at the time, it was  revealed a year later, that geese rounded up from city parks were sent to Kennedy Airport for gassings.

 

But, when in 2010,  there was public outrage about the goose gassings and dumping of the bodies in landfills, tactics were again changed this past summer to round up the geese and send them to slaughter in Pennsylvania.  

 

But, 575 geese, (each adult weighing more than ten pounds), yielded only 424 lbs of "edible meat" (less than one pound per bird.)    Obviously, the PR ploy of sending the doomed geese to slaughter almost 4 hours away from NYC not only represented extreme and unjustifiable cruelty to animals, but an unpardonable waste of tax money, as well. 

 

The fact is, we could have fed "hungry people" Russian caviar for far less than it required to round up, transport, slaughter and supposedly, toxicity "test" wildlife from city parks.  One has to question where exactly did the USDA and city officials "cut corners" to make the irrational and insidious venture in any way financially doable?  The so-called, "toxicity testing" seems the likely and only feasible cut.

 

The bottom line and question to ask of both the past goose massacres and the present is, Where does this all end?

 

In the discovery of Ms. West's astounding and chilling testimony from two years ago, it seems the only legitimate and sane answer is that the brutal goose killings should have ended that very night in 2009.

 

Or, more appropriately, they never should have occurred at all.

 

How is it even possible that we would still plan further killings of whatever geese still miraculously remain and survive in public parks and city properties?

 

What have we really become?

 

How do we dare to call ourselves "civilized and humane" as a culture and a people while allowing such brutalization and eradication of innocent and defenseless wildlife not only to occur in the first place, but to continue ad infitum?   -- PCA

 

 

 

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