Just how bad is New York’s Canada goose problem?
Pretty bad.
Bryan Swift, a game-bird specialist for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, told a hearing Thursday that the five boroughs and Long Island together are home to 20,000 of the fowl.
That’s fully five times the goose population that the area’s land mass should be able to support, reported Swift.
No wonder the geese threaten to turn the areas around La Guardia, JFK and Newark airports into no-fly zones by menacing aircraft – as they did US Airways Flight 1549 last month, shutting down its engines and forcing it to ditch into the Hudson.
So what’s to be done?
For the past few years, the Town of Hempstead has partnered with an outfit called GeesePeace (no kidding) that proposes “humane” ways to control the goose population – which, it says, will double every five years if left unchecked.
The group’s suggested solution: coating goose eggs with corn oil, which prevents them from developing and hatching.
And, in fact, that’s exactly what officials in Hempstead have been doing since 2005 – coating some 4,000 eggs in total.
Well, we’re sure that makes the folks over at PETA – not to mention the people at Mazola – all loosy-goosey.
But our preferred solution remains one that we call “Geese No Peace.”
Don’t bother playing Iron Chef with the eggs: Get the geese before they lay them.
By killing mother goose.
And wrecking nests.
Remember: Some 219 people have died worldwide in aircraft bird-strikes since 1988, and damage runs as high as $600 million a year.
Yes, it would be nice if the geese died with a smile on their beaks.
But human lives come first.
The geese are a menace and need to be gone.
Now, please.