Goose Assassin Hired by New York City Department of Sanitation

Removing geese from Prospect Park is inhumane and ineffectve. "Repeatedly killing wild animals does not improve safety. Killing merely opens habitat for other geese to fill." This seems an obvious reality - since the complete removal of geese from Prospect park last year, over 50 geese have returned. Enlisting the USDA year after year will not address the concerns of the flying public, and will only attract new geese to the area, thereby further endangering air safety as airplanes fly lower and have been found to ignore known migration paths.

We must show the USDA and Mayor Bloomberg that we will tolerate another mass murder of geese in our public parks. Please, everyone, contact your City Council person and the mayor to protest the planned cruel and misguided slaughter of more geese in Prospect Park.

After today's announcement of yet another air traffic controller falling asleep at the switch, it looks like they have a much bigger issue on their hands.

As said in the other comments, there is a small number of geese in the park, less than 50. We do not understand where this exaggerated number comes from. This park as stated before is between 9 and 11 miles from any airport. The extermination of geese after the landing of flight 1549 in the Hudson does nothing for aviation safety. All it does is open up a habitat and takes taxpayers $$$$ and puts it in the pockets of Bloomberg and his cronies. Iy is nothing but a ruse, letting citizens believe he is doing something to protect them.

We are out and out killing animals that have every right to be in the skies. and instead of finding other ways to learn to co-exist peacefully with them, we strip them of their rights to exist on this planet.

Policies need to change to reflect compassion and respect for all constituents, not just the voting kind.

Please call 311 and register an opinion with the mayor to say you will not tolerate another mass extermination of these birds and to demand they use only non-lethal alternatives to gassing.

A comment made after World War II was that if the Germans had put the same effort into their strategy of war that they put into exterminating the Jews, they might have actually won. An interesting analogy can be drawn between that comment and New York's Mayor Bloomberg's completely irrational hatred and efforts toward exterminating a benign species at excessive taxpayer expense instead of addressing the real problems and needs of the city.

Community after community has begun to drop the government killing programs after years of killing - and the funds that pay for this - have proven to be a dismal failure resulting in not only fewer geese but more. Humane solutions of landscape alteration, egg addling and border collies have a verifiable positive result. Yes, this costs money too, but it at least works and can be cut back after time. Throwing dead geese into landfills is cruel, wasteful and environmentally irresponsible. And for those of you who clearly know nothing about this issue and say 'feed them to the poor" - no one wants to eat geese, least of all the poor. They are hard to cook and tough no matter how you cook them. Also, it is unconscionable to kill and cook something that did not do anything to deserve to be killed in the first place. Don't even try to make something good out of something evil.

There is no legitimate claim to airplane safety in killing geese. The plant that ditched in the Hudson had a long and documented history of engine trouble. Couple that with the recent spate of air traffic controllers falling asleep at the job and you can easily see that the real problem in airplanes is humajn caused and not birds at all. There is bird-detecting radar called the Merlin System that would solve most bird-airplane collision issues and mapping migration routes and re-routing planes slightly would resolve the rest of the problem. For reasons that make no sense, the Mayor thinks the public is stupid enough to think that we will fall for his simplistic killing of birds instead of addressing the REAL airline problems. His buddies in the government must be getting some payoff for him to compromise our safety so foolishly instead of taking the actions that would truly protect us.

In a city of millions, a few hundred geese are not only NOT any problem at all but a source of pleasure and nature for children to discover with wonder and joy and seniors to watch in peace and contentment when they have little else left in life.

Mayor Bloomberg's irrational jihad against the geese needs to stop. The city has REAL problems that need to be dealt with. Geese aren't among them. Having his own money, I read that he only takes $1 a year from the city for the position of mayor. I guess you get what you pay for.

Thank you for informing readers of this.

Prospect Park is nine miles from the airports. The justification for slaughtering the geese at PP for so-called, "ariline safety," thus flies out the window, literally.

Currently, there are less than 50 geese at Prospect Park. To go in and massacre the few geese that are there would be sheer lunacy and abomination on top of abomination.

It is critical for all those who care about the wildlife in our city parks to stay on top of the situations with the animals and monitor closely.

Also, to let all your representatives and park officials KNOW that you care about protection of nature and wildlife and will not tolerate further extermination campaigns against them.