(Photo -- Parent geese, Bozo and Bonnie, watching over their young at Central Park yesterday. But, even the most vigilant goose parents have no defense against what is likely to hit many city parks over the next few weeks.)
Scrawled in chalk on a pedestrian path in Inwood Hill Park this past week were the apparent pleas from a child:
" I'm so angry! I bet they didn't ask us, did they? If I was older I would help you. Stop the USDA.
Sincerely, J Wood"
(To see the actual message as well as what it replied to, please go directly to Inwood Park Save the geese, FB page: Save the Geese of Inwood Hill Park (40) )
Inwood Park was the site last summer of two USDA goose roundups in which more than 30 geese and goslings were rounded up and sent to slaughter in Pennsylvania. The child writing on a park path thus has reason to be angry and concerned.
"J Wood" represents one of hundreds of thousands of New York City children and adults who have delighted with the Canada geese in their public parks, but whose loves, needs and wishes are seemingly being ignored and subjugated by city officials, FAA, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the USDA and one particularly ruthless and ambitious US Senator from New York.
New York is a city where most people do not have yards and millions of residents are unable to keep a pet for various reasons (particularly "no pets" housing).
For these potentially millions of people, their city and public parks represent their only opportunity for connection to nature and animals.
However, as city parks are designed mainly to be recreational areas for people, it is not possible to have true representation of "nature" that would contain both predators and prey.
Moreover, most animals in the wild are naturally aloof and afraid of humans and are unable to survive in an urban, heavily human used environment.
Nevertheless, there are notable exceptions -- Canada geese being among them.
Perhaps because most "resident" geese are the descendents of those wild Canada geese captured, wing-clipped, bred, raised and later released by humans (mostly hunting clubs) in the last century (this in effort to prevent the species from going extinct in the US), they are more acclimated to and comfortable around human activity.
One could even argue that most resident Canada geese are "semi-tame" animals, readily walking up to and frequently taking food from human hands -- including children.
Though difficult to prove, it doesn't require a great stretch of the imagination to conclude that Canada geese are probably the most photographed of all animals in any and all parks that actually contain them. One does not need binoculars, powerful zoom cameras or photographic talent to get good photos of Canada geese. (Indeed, small children can easily accomplish this.) In the years, I have been going to Central Park and observing Canada geese, they have been, by far, the most common photographic wildlife subject by people of all ages and from all walks of life.
And yet, they are also the most seemingly vilified of all animals throughout the United States.
Are we in disdain of what we helped to create? -- A semi-tame bird who because they did not have the thousands of years of human "domestication" (such as dogs) still retain most of their wild instincts, but at the same time are comfortable around and unafraid of humans because of the 50 odd years "resident" geese were actually bred and raised around humans?
Or, do humans always have tendency to mix "love and hate" together a la the famous quote, "Familiarity breeds contempt?"
These are interesting questions to contemplate and ponder.
But, they do not solve our immediate quandary.
Regardless of the reasons resident Canada geese are so comfortable around and willing to engage with humans, this very trust serves as their downfall during the "molting season" when our then flightless park geese are literally sitting ducks for government sponsored slaughter.
In her continuing crusade for expanded "culls" on Canada geese, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D) New York recently writes in a letter to Secretary of the Interior, Salazar: ".....I also urge you to immediately issue permits to begin the process of culling additional geese on the applicable National Park Service land before the end of the 2012 molting period." (Kirsten Gillibrand - United States Senator for New York: News)
Apparently, rounding up and slaughtering geese from Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is not enough to satisfy Ms. Gillibrand -- nor the fact that more than 3,000 geese have been rounded up and either gassed or slaughtered from city parks for the past three years under the guise of "airline safety."
One surmises from Gillibrand's numerous rants against geese that the "impassioned" US Senator will not rest until every last Canada goose in a New York City park is dead.
Nowhere in her various diatribes against geese for "air safety" does Ms. Gillibrand ever mention that not one person has died on a commercial jet liner due to Canada geese nor that of the air crashes from or to JFK airport since 1960 and the more than 700 human souls who lost their lives, none of the disasters involved strikes with Canada geese or any wildlife.
But, who is going to argue with a US Senator who puts at the forefront of her "agenda" the demand for "airline safety?"
"Better a goose die than a human!"
Only we are not talking of one goose or even geese that a plane might typically strike. (Most bird strikes occur during the seasons of migration when millions of birds pass over the Atlantic flyway according to the latest SEIS.)
We are talking of descending upon city parks and killing hundreds of resident geese (geese who generally don't travel very far around public parks). -- The same "semi-tame" geese that thousands of people photograph and take delight in every day of the week.
In another part of her latest press release, Senator Gillibrand writes, "Now that the USDA has issued its proposal and the public has had an opportunity to have their voices heard, we cannot and should not wait another day to act while public safety is at risk."
One wonders what "public safety" Gillibrand is actually referring to as not one New Yorker has lost his/her life as result of a Canada goose nor has anyone been attacked by a goose or gosling?
And although Gillibrand asserts that "the public has had opportunity to have their voices heard" (as in comment to SEIS), one suspects the voices of "J Wood" and many thousands of children just like him or her have in fact, been silenced, thereby necessitating the scrawling of words in chalk on a park path.
".....Stop the USDA!"
For a Senator who portends to care so much for children, one concludes, Gillibrand doesn't care about the needs or wishes of this child and many more that go beyond mere food stamps.
There is more than one way to nourish the human soul, most of which do not contain calories, but rather involve Canada geese and/or other forms of nature.
Patty Adjamine,
New York City
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