Marcus Yam/The New York Times About 75 people gathered Saturday evening in a vigil for the Canada geese at Prospect Park.After the killing of nearly 400 Canada geese in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, many parkgoers railed against the government agencies that had rounded up the birds. Most focused on the morality of the killings.
But Henry J. Stern, a former city parks commissioner, perhaps reframed the debate by suggesting that the reasoning behind the decision to kill the birds might be flawed.
“Are there reasons for singling out the Prospect Park geese for the mobile gas chamber, followed by the landfill?” Mr. Stern wrote on his StarQuest blog. “Does it make any difference if these geese were migratory or non-migratory, or whether they ever left the precincts of the park?”
The policy, as stated by the United States Department of Agriculture, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, was to reduce the number of geese within seven miles of Kennedy International and La Guardia Airports. Geese have flown into airplanes, causing millions of dollars in damage. They also presented a hazard to air safety, which was highlighted when geese flew into the engines of US Airways Flight 1549 in January 2009, forcing it to ditch in the Hudson River.
But Mr. Stern, who was parks commissioner in the Koch and Giuliani administrations, was skeptical that the geese in Prospect Park fell within that seven-mile radius. And so he charted the distance and came up with 9.4 miles – more than two miles beyond what the government agencies had stated.
“The bureaucrats think it’s terrific, but sometimes there’s a slip in the execution of these policies,” Mr. Stern said in an interview.
City Room, using the Internet tool Draft Logic, came up with similar figures: 9.53 miles to Kennedy and 9.23 miles to La Guardia.
Carol A. Bannerman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture, said this week that officials had calculated 6.5 miles between Prospect Park and La Guardia and Kennedy.
But the precise distance might not matter, according to Paul D. Curtis, an associate professor of wildlife sciences at Cornell University. Canada geese typically fly 12 to 15 miles from their home base, he said. Most of the geese at Prospect Park were resident geese.
“The residents and migrants mix,” Dr. Curtis said. “Local breeding birds fly just as far as the migratory birds.”
He said that resident Canada geese in upstate New York had been banded to see how far they would fly. “They ended up being harvested in Virginia,” Dr. Curtis said.
As for Mr. Stern, he emphasized that he was only asking questions, not passing judgment, and remained neutral on the policy. He also agreed with many that the geese might not be charming, but that they deserved a defense.
He has been referring to the geese as “the Prospect Park 400.”
“These are not the Mother Teresa of all creatures,” he said. “These are animals that get in the way. They’re very territorial, and they hiss and bite. There are reasons not to care for the geese. But it’s a question of judgment if you use the mechanical powers of the human race to exterminate them or use less than lethal measures.”
Marcus Yam/The New York Times Many of the people at the vigil held photos of geese and goslings.About 75 people gathered Saturday evening in a vigil for the Canada geese at the park, including State Senator Eric L. Adams and City Councilman Brad Lander. Many of them held photos of geese and goslings and signs that read “Why?” and “Rest in Peace, Geese.”
“This can’t happen again, in the middle of the night for the government to sneak in and be bigger than the people they represent,” Senator Adams said. “That’s not the city I want to live in.”
Mr. Lander encouraged protesters to call 311 — after all, he said, a crime had been committed.
As the politicians and protesters spoke, a single goose swam a lonely vigil nearby.
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