City Prepares to Count Geese - And Kill, If Necessary

The city Parks Department has signed on to a plan to reduce the geese population in Prospect Park with non-lethal means such as poisoning goose eggs, posting signs asking people not to feed them and getting ready to deploy dogs to shoo them away. But the city is reserving the right to kill geese if less aggressive approaches aren't working.

City Council member Brad Lander and others are asking Mayor Michael Bloomberg to declare a moratorium on killing geese this year, to see if the plan can work.

"It's only just begun, and the opportunity to see whether that goose management, wildlife management plan in Prospect Park is working – that’s what we’re going to see this summer,” Lander said.

City Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Farrell Sklerov said officials will go out and evaluate the geese population over the next six weeks. Although the city works together with state and federal authorities, it ultimately falls to wildlife management officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to enforce federal aviation guidelines that call for limiting birds within seven miles of an airport, Sklerov said.

"The risk from large geese has not gone away. The recommendations have not changed. It's accurate to say city will deal with this issue in the way that’s recommended [by the Federal Aviation Authority]," Sklerov said.

It falls to USDA officials to round up and kill geese, if they deem the step is warranted, because other measures will not work.

Sklerov said non-lethal measures can work in some situations. When geese were congregating in a depressed part of a field on Rikers Island, authorities were able to fill in the area, and the geese went away. But Sklerov said authorities cannot wait to see whether other measures are working.

“The city learned in nearly tragic fashion that mitigation needs to be nearly immediate,” he said, referring to incidents where birds were sucked into jet engines but crashes were averted.

Lander and other Council members have submitted a bill that would form a wildlife advisory council and a wildlife plan that would address not just geese in Prospect Park, but many species of animals across the city.

"We’ve got an array of wildlife here – more than people think of, until they run into it – and the right way to do it is with experts weighing in, with humane treatment considered, as well as health and safety of humans, first and foremost, with an opportunity for public input and comment, and then a public process for considering it," Lander said.

The bill is likely to stay on hold until the City Council and mayor come to a deal on the coming year's budget – a process that typically culminates in the days and weeks leading up to the June 30 deadline.

Sklerov said the city has no position yet on the Council proposal.