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The bright orange crates are stacked up, equipment in place and the trucks ready to go.
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But, we don't know which parks, golf courses or "refuges" USDA Wildlife (Extermination) Services are heading to next or when.
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Unlike recently past years, there has been a complete and concrete wall of secrecy and silence surrounding this year's goose kills in New York City.
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No DEC press release announcing the culls. No New York Times piece by Andy Newman basically parroting a USDA press release. No grandstanding by Senator Gillibrand (D) NY, calling for an all out slaughter of the geese at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. No mention anywhere of a new goose killing contract being signed with the city, though from all indications, one has been.
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No, it has all been silent. Dead silence, literally.
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Reports from witnesses and (27) GooseWatch NYC suggest WS goose kills have already occurred at Inwood Hills Park and Van Courtlandt Park. But, there are no photos, videos or media reports to back up the claims -- just missing (and probably very dead) geese.
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For sure, we know the molting (flightless) geese didn't suddenly up and leave these locations. Moreover, Inwood Hills Park and Van Courtlandt Park have been sites of previous goose slaughters. WS apparently likes to return to the scenes of past slime. --easy pickings for them, one supposes.
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One seems to recall something called, "Community Notification."
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Community Notification (like the name implies), simply means that communities are given sufficient notice regarding proposed wildlife culls in their area and also time to respond via a "public comment period." (Such recently occurred in NY state when the DEC proposed eradicating all the wild mute swans in the state. The media widely reported and the public reacted very poorly to the plan. It was subsequently voted down in the state legislature.)
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But, nothing has been reported on the goose kills this year in NYC either by government, politicians, media or targeted and cooperating parks.
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Presumably, should people show up in parks and question suddenly missing geese, they will be told the flightless geese "flew away."
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Such is exactly what happened at Prospect Park four years ago after 362 geese and goslings were captured by USDA WS in the wee hours of the morning of July 8th and sent for gassing.
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Questioning park goers were initially told by park staffers that the geese and their babies "flew to a nearby cemetery." (Perhaps that wasn't so far fetched as the gassed geese ended up in a land fill.)
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The plan of secrecy and lies however fell apart when two knowledgeable park goers (who knew goslings and molting geese couldn't fly ) contacted the New York Times and the rest, as they say, is history.
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At that time, USDA WS maintained it was Prospect Park's duty to do "Community Notification." But, it was never done. (There is usually some loophole in government documents, contracts and rules that allows for widdling out of usual and standard protocols.)
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Nor apparently since that time have other targeted and cooperating parks done Community Notifications of impending WS goose slaughters on their properties.
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As noted previously, we learn of the goose slaughters months after the fact in APHIS Goose Removal Reports.
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By that time, even the media isn't interested in reading or reporting.
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This long history of stonewalling, deception, silence and in extreme cases, outright lying is unbefitting for governmental agencies boasting of their "full transparency."
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There is nothing at all transparent about conducting wildlife slaughters in public parks and other properties (usually in the wee hours of the morning) and then taking pains to insure the public knows nothing about them until months later. -- The same public that pays for these wildlife massacres with its tax dollars.
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The different governmental agencies can "pass the buck" in terms of whose responsibility it is to actually do Community Notification, but the bottom line seems to be that the term itself has simply become one more euphemism (like "euthanasia") designed to make the public "feel good" that something is being done that is not or that something which is truly dirty and corrupt is somehow magically sanitized. -- PCA
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WOW!!
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