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img src=”https://friendsofanimals.org/img/animals/canadagoose.jpg ” alt=”Canada Goose” width=”250″ height=”167″ //div
pstrongAs Goose Slaughter Looms, Advocates Demand Protection for Urban Wildlife/strong/p
pstrongWhen:/strong Wednesday, June 27 2012, 6-8pm/p
pstrongWhere:/strong Mayor Bloomberg’s Mansion: 17 East 79th Street, between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue/p
pstrongContact:/strong Edita Birnkrant, NY Director, Friends of Animals 917.940.2725; a href=”mailto:Edita@friendsofanimals.org”EMAIL/a/p
pNew York City–New Yorkers, park-goers and bird and wildlife advocates will gather for a large, rousing and colorful rally at Mayor Bloomberg’s mansion door in protest of the fourth summer of contracting set to start between New York City officials and the federal Wildlife Services division to target thousands of Canada geese inhabiting the city. /p
blockquotep”How can Mayor Bloomberg justify this grotesque tax-funded slaughter of thousands of beautiful geese and their newly hatched goslings that were rounded up, stuffed into crates, loaded onto trucks and slaughtered by USDA agents in the past three years?” asks Edita Birnkrant, NY Director of Friends of Animals. /p/blockquote
pAnother Mayor-approved slaughter is set to start any day now, while the geese are molting and flightless, even though 90% of the Canada geese who are part of the biodiversity of our parks have been exterminated by the Mayor’s misguided plan, ostensibly to make air travel safer, a myth debunked by Friends of Animals. /p
p575 geese were killed just last year throughout the five boroughs. Friends of Animals activists will take their demands to the Mayor’s front door./p
pNew York City is actually creating the situations that attract birds to airports. Both Mayor Bloomberg and the FAA approved the creation of a massive garbage transfer site to be built next to runways at LaGuardia Airport, a dangerous, irresponsible move that will attract birds to those areas./p
blockquotep”Air safety will only be improved by focusing on deterring geese and other birds from airports through habitat modification, effective land-use planning and radar detection, not by killing Canada geese or any other birds that planes share the skies with,” says Edita Birnkrant. /p/blockquote
blockquotep”Simple solutions that we’ve educated the Mayor’s office about, such as allowing grass around runways and airport property to grow several inches higher instead of mowing it can keep away flocks of geese and other birds that would otherwise be drawn to the short, mowed lawns,” Birnkrant adds. /p/blockquote
pGooseWatch, a community based group formed to document the USDA roundups includes Friends of Animals. The latter group is also committed to preventing and disrupting the USDA agents from rounding up and killing the geese. The Times Ledger recently reported on a href=”http://www.timesledger.com/stories/2012/18/jfkbirdstrikefollow_all_2012_05_03_q.html”GooseWatch’s efforts/a in parks in all five boroughs./p
pThe staff and supporters of Friends of Animals strongly oppose all policies advocating birth control of geese or addling of goose eggs – destroying eggs by shaking, piercing or coating the eggs with oil, often scaring them away from their nests by using hazing dogs – considering these approaches traumatic and invasive. /p
pWe know there’s plenty of room in this huge city for Canada geese and their babies to live in peace, and on Wednesday we will demand that Mayor Bloomberg stop the slaughter of New York City’s Canada geese./p