Save Us

About me:

I am a Private Pilot that knows that there are better ways of managing the bird populations surrounding our nation's airports than rounding up birds during their molting season (when they cannot fly) and gassing them to death. This is a true act of cowardice on the part of political officials and will come at great expense to taxpayers ($100,000+).

I understand that people are scared, however we do not have to make the decision of "people or geese". There are better, more efficient ways to handle this problem.

We had one big accident with not a single fatality and all of a sudden the city is blaming the geese for taking down airplanes and wishes to take 2,000 of their lives. What will our children think? We are supposed to be teaching them conservation but instead are setting out to kill thousands of innocent birds instead of finding a solution that would enable us to live side by side peacefully with them.

The 2,000 Canada geese that are going to be rounded up and gassed to a miserable and very painful death do not deserve to die simply for living. And in fact, it was migratory geese that were found in the engines of Flight 1549, not the resident geese that the city is putting to death. The resident geese do not pose a problem to airports as they will not fly away from the area unless they need to find food or shelter. The migratory geese however will be coming back again next year. Overall, the scapegoating of geese is just unacceptable.

There are many who have volunteered their time to help relocate the geese or perform egg addling (which prevents egg development so fewer birds hatch), however the city has turned it's back on these volunteers choosing instead to gas the geese with taxpayers hard earned dollars. Various landscape management practices (habitat modification) that would make airports unattractive to the geese have also not been given serious consideration.

The Bloomberg administration has a plan to build a municipal solid waste transfer station in College Point, Queens...just 2,000 feet from a LaGuardia runway. This will create another bird magnet and will certainly not improve air safety. Mayor Bloomberg, as a pilot himself, should know better than to kill these geese. The geese do not pose a problem, however birds attracted to trash (seagulls, etc) do.

Please help to stop this injustice!