Although Canada geese have been blamed for everything from pollution to terrorizing other birds, to bringing down planes to "flying into people's faces" the facts present a very different story.
Through observations and logging, I have attempted to show that geese are beneficial to and attract other waterfowl, while at the same time their droppings (acting as fertilizer) are beneficial to the growth and ultimate health of grass.
But, who am I after all, but a semi- retired dog and cat rescuer? I have no degree after my name, nor even a college education.
That is why it was so refreshing to recently come across an important article from India that actually backs and confirms personal observations and conclusions:
Though not lengthy or particularly detailed, this piece appears to refute some of the major charges against geese (i.e. that they destroy environments and keep away other birds.)
As written repeatedly in this journal, geese, (being waterfowl) are a strategic part of natural ecology and are important to other birds in terms of finding or creating food sources and even affording a sense of security and protection.
That geese have been so demonized around the world is a great mystery -- unless it is simply part of the human condition to seek scapegoats for our own failings or destruction.
Acknowledgement and accountability can sometimes be bitter pills for us humans to swallow.
Geese are of course, an almost perfect target for human frustration and blame games.
Notwithstanding the ludicrous charge of geese "flying into people's faces," the fact is, geese have no fangs, talons or claws with which to attack people or even defend themselves.
Moreover, geese are, (compared to other birds), fairly slow and pondering, generally trusting of humans and for six weeks of the year they are entirely flightless during the molting period. This render geese "easy pickings" for government roundups whether in water or on land.
Since most people aren't particularly knowledgeable about or intimately familiar with geese, it is easy to cast all kinds of aspersions, distortions and allegations upon geese with little confrontation or challenge.
A recent example of this media tendency of wild exaggeration and failure to fact-check is this article out of Rhode Island yesterday which claims in the last paragraph that it was a "huge flock of geese that brought down flight 1549 in the Hudson in 2009...."
The fact is that it was TWO migratory geese from Canada that the United Airways plane collided with on 1-15-2009, not a "huge flock." Moreover, the particular plane had suffered engine stall on the previous flight and almost had to emergency land (something that had nothing to do with birds). Passengers report scare on earlier US Airways Flight 1549 - CNN Normally, when planes collide with birds, they return to airports. That this one landed in a river said far more about the plane itself than the TWO geese it collided with.
But, these are the kinds of facts that get lost in the shuffle of seeking easy scapegoating and blame.
After all, it is far easier and cheaper to target and kill thousands of slow, flightless and totally defenseless geese than to fix all the mechanical deficiencies and problems in our airliners.
Still, perhaps the very best example of scapegoating (or really, "scapegeesing") geese is Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York.
In the early morning of July 8th, 2010, 368 Canada geese and their goslings were rounded up from Prospect Park, trucked to Kennedy Airport and gassed by USDA "Wildlife Services." (Wildlife Services in fact, killed 5 million animals in 2010.
Primary justification for the massacre of Prospect Park goose families and their babies was of course, "Flight 1549" landing in the Hudson. But, there were other excuses as previously alluded to.
But, Prospect Park has long been a location of numerous problems, none of which have anything to do with geese.
To offer just the most recent example is this article out of yesterday's Brooklyn Paper describing teenagers setting a bird habitat ablaze.
Prospect Park has long been a bastion for animal cruelty, drug dealing, refuge dumping, assorted crimes and general neglect.
But, in 2010, the entire population of Prospect Park Canada geese was targeted and destroyed.
What does that say about human priorities, acknowledgement, responsibility and accountability?
It seems to say, "We are powerless or unwilling to clean up the real sources of crime, pollution, drugs, illegal dumping and other problems. But, we can target and kill the easy geese."
"Scapegeesing" the geese. -- The perfect and easy targets for human frustrations, failures and blame games. -- PCA
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