Poop Hitting the Fan in Fairhope, Alabama
It appears the poop is hitting the fan in Fairhope, Alabama.
The story of 41 geese drugged, rounded up and gassed by USDA on July 31st is now widely reported in both local media and even by the AP.
http://www2.wkrg.com/news/2012/aug/14/what-happened-fairhope-geese-ar-4338544/
(To see additional articles on Fairhope, please go to: http://www.facebook.com/CanadaGeeseCall)
Sadly, the exposure of government deception, obfuscation, squandering of tax money and outright lies comes too late to save the 41 geese wrongly scapegoated for water "pollution" and subjected to an unnecessary massacre.
But, it doesn't come too late for the people and the press to demand accountability and the truth.
It appears Mayor Kant of Fairhope entered into a contract with USDA without asking any questions and without letting his own city council know of the impending slaughter.
Officials then attempted to whitewash and sweep under the rug, the entire incident by claiming the geese were "relocated."
We now learn the geese were "euthanized" (USDA code and euphemism for gassing).
While one would like to think that covert government and USDA actions such as occurred in Fairhope are rare and isolated, we know in fact, they are not.
These guys just got caught in some of the lies.
But, in most places they are able to get away with the lies (as in New York City) because a so-called "free press" doesn't question anything.
The difference in Fairhope was that a couple of journalists actually did question, investigate and report.
We need the same to occur in the rest of the country.
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Descent to Zero
The number of Canada geese currently in Central Park has once again dropped to zero.
While it could be somewhat comforting to think that such absence is attributable to "harassment" (as distasteful as that thought actually is), the reality is that it is more likely due to the fact that the resident Canada goose population in New York City has been decimated through what are now, years of USDA goose roundups and slaughters.
Central Park Conservancy has said repeatedly that it is not using "goose patrols" (i.e. harassment) this year due to the "low" number of geese in the park.
While past history and incidents in other areas might prompt one to distrust or doubt official claims of anything, it does not make sense that harassment would be used on less than a dozen geese in an 874 acre park.
But, all the Central Park resident geese are nevertheless gone now.
Assuming the claims of non-harassment to be true, the absence of any geese in Central Park at a time there would be many geese in past years demonstrates several things:
#1. Any claims of people "feeding" geese being responsible for geese "staying" in a location are utterly false. As noted, the Central Park resident geese were constantly fed by humans each and every day of the year. And yet, as soon as growing in flight feathers, both families of resident geese left their locations. Geese do not depend in any way on humans for food. The constant claims to the contrary are apparently attempt to blame feeders for imagined "overpopulations" of geese, as well as to discourage humans from making any connections with geese and/or caring about them.
#2 The fact there are no geese in an area (specifically, Harlem Meer in Central Park) that used to be a "gathering" site for dozens of geese following the summer molt suggests there are no flocks of geese to fly into Central Park from molting locations. That is hugely significant and troubling. Though there are scattered reports from around the city of some flocks of geese here or there, the numbers are drastically down from what they were just two years ago.
#3 Between USDA yearly cullings, harassment and egg oiling in some locations and expanded hunting seasons throughout New York State, it does not require a rocket scientist to speculate that New York City will likely be completely devoid of any resident Canada geese within five years.
Last night, while walking around a goose-empty Central Park, I could not help but feel I was looking at the future.
Not a future long after I am dead, but rather a future that is literally around the corner, if not already here in many locations.
When starting this blog on geese a couple of years ago, the hope was that by sharing gained knowledge and information about geese, it would help foster a new appreciation and respect for this vital part of quickly disappearing "urban wildlife."
But, I fear that this journal has instead become a daily log on the slow and deliberate driving to extinction, a species that once used to grace and adorn our city parks in large, "resident" numbers.
Descent to zero. -- PCA
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