City Council Members Join In Defense of Animals To Protest New York City’s Massacre of Canada Geese

Rally at City Hall Calls for Humane, Non-Lethal Population Control Programs

New York, New York (August 11, 2010) – In Defense of Animals, an international animal protection organization, will be joined by New York City Council members Brad Lander, Stephen Levin, and Letitia James on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan on Thursday, August 12, at noon, to call for an end to the city’s contract with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Wildlife Services to kill all Canada geese within seven miles of NY’s airports. The contract is established in conjunction with the Port Authority of New York.

Also attending the rally will be State Senator Eric Adams, who represents the district that includes Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where, without warning, 400 geese were rounded up and gassed in the early hours of July 8, 2010.

The Prospect Park killings sparked an outcry from local residents, many of whom knew individual geese by name, and relished them as a rare and vital link to nature amid city life. That outcry, which has now grown into a full roar of dissent, has since exposed reports of 1,700 Canada geese killed in New York City by the USDA’s Wildlife Services over the past year, with plans to wipe out roughly two-thirds of the existing goose population in New York State. Rally attendees, including the elected officials, are vowing to see the killings stopped and humane, non-lethal population control programs implemented instead.

For decades, state run wildlife agencies have been inflating goose populations by releasing them into areas to swell their numbers for recreational hunting. In addition, artificial landscapes, like manicured lawns and golf courses, attract geese to areas where they would otherwise never inhabit.

“This is a manmade problem that demands a humane solution,” said Scotlund Haisley, President of In Defense of Animals. “It’s outrageous to annihilate geese because of human error and arrogance. Humane, non-lethal population control programs allow us to address this issue without killing them.”

Resident Canada geese population issues can be addressed through a variety of humane, non-lethal population control methods.   OvoControl-G, an oral contraception developed and refined by the USDA, Wildlife Services National Wildlife Research Center and Innolytics, LLC is one method that is a safe and an environmentally friendly solution to curbing population growth for Canada geese.

Mr. Haisley will read from a statement prepared by Erick Wolf, CEO of Innolytics, LLC, which addresses the difficulty his company has encountered in getting the USDA Wildlife Services to utilize OvoControl-G.

The City and Port Authority claim that aviation safety demands the birds be killed, but ignore the very fact that cities worldwide deal with the problem of birds near airports without exterminating them. The problem of birds colliding with engines is real, but can be dealt with by employing a range of methods, including radar detection, currently not in use in New York City’s airports.

For more information, please visit www.indefenseofanimals.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Barbara Stagno 914.479.5276 (office), 914.584.5875 (cell)