New York Destroys Inconvenient Food Source

What's good for the goose may be good for the gander, but what's even better for the goose is avoiding the state of New York. Apparently, state officials have decided that New York has an excess of geese. In an article presented by Isolde Rafferty of the New York Times, the death of almost 400 Canadian geese is exposed. The purpose? Population control. The method used so far is euthanasia. The geese are contained in cages that were originally made for turkeys until they meet their death.

The real kicker here is that the officials of the state of New York are the ones who brought the geese here to begin with. Early in the 20th century, the Canadian goose population was so low in numbers that efforts were made to increase the population through transplanting the geese from other regions of the country.

The problem with the geese is that they are an inconvenience to mankind. Increased air travel has led to plane crashes due to geese flying into the engines. Nature calls for adaptation, which can clearly be seen here, since the geese that have disrupted the flight plans of humans were not actually from the local population. Perhaps the local population of geese knows better?

State officials have concluded that the best course of action is to trim some of the fat off of the Canadian goose population. Thousands have been killed already and more deaths are to be expected. Canadian geese are being systematically captured, destroyed and buried by the hundreds and thousands.

Is this really the only solution? With millions of people starving in the state of New York alone, isn't there something better to do? The death of this wildlife is bad enough, but to simply destroy a potential food source in the middle of an economic crisis seems incomprehensible.

It's understandable that New York laws limit the amount of goose-hunting allowed. Allowing hunters to run rampant around the airports in an effort to decrease the Canadian goose population could be dangerous to the human population. Since the birds are being crated before they are killed, it would seem to make sense that they could simply be processed and packaged. There is certainly enough need for food to feed the masses in the city of New York alone. It seems that, once again, politics and common sense cannot be found in the same sentence. Doesn't that just get your goose?

References:

Isolde Rafferty, "400 Park Geese Die for Human Fliers' Sake", The New York Times