11/10/99

Westchester County (NY) Symposium on Canada Geese

White Plains, NY - The Westchester County Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation sponsored an all day symposium on Canada Geese. Numerous experts made presentations on a wide range of subjects, including: the natural history of Canada geese, a review of the methods used for controlling them where problems exist, and whether they are a threat to public health. The speakers/panelists were from local, state and federal agencies, as well as private organizations including the Coalition.

Highlights Included:

Public Health - Frank Guido, Principal Sanitarian, Westchester County Department of Health, surprised some of the 60 attendees by reporting that, despite the frequency with which concerns are raised and allegations made, Canada geese do not pose a health risk to the public. Other prominent health experts, including Dr. David S. Adam of New Jersey's Department of Health, and Dr. Timothy Ford of Harvard's School of Public Health recently expressed similar sentiments.

George Haas of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service revealed that permits to kill geese cannot be approved unless a serious threat to public health or agriculture can be claimed. He also said that the federal permitting office relies exclusively on the testimony of local health officials. His department does not make any attempt to validate claims made about geese. This explains why goose killing advocates pressure local health officials to make unfounded and alarmist statements about geese being a health risk.

It appears that what we have been arguing all along is correct: that goose killing permits issued by the US Fish and Wildlife Service are based on applications containing false public health information. These permits are not in compliance with federal laws under the Migratory Bird Treaty and should not have ever been issued. Indeed, those permits still in effect should be revoked at once.

Recommendations for Goose Control - A wide range of management options were presented at the symposium. Clarkstown, NY Councilwoman Ann-Marie Smith told how her town had killed all the geese in their parks two years in a row, only to discover that within weeks, other geese moved in to fill the vacancy. She extolled the virtues of the town's non-lethal program that has been a great success.

The Symposium's organizer, Jack Robbins, Deputy Commissioner, Parks, Recreation & Conservation, concluded the symposium with a series of 9 recommendations for goose management that he intends to present to the Commissioner. Each of the 9 recommendations represents a different type of non-lethal goose control, ranging from the use of herding dogs such as border collies, to non-toxic chemical repellents, methods that have a proven track record in other communities.

Goose News Index | Main

11/10/99

Public Outcry Stops Goose Hunt at Center for Mentally Impaired

Gouldsboro, PA - The Keystone Community Residential Center is a home for mentally impaired adults. Alert local citizens learned that the Center's administrators had a scheme to evacuate the residents so that hunters could blast away at geese on the grounds of the facility. While it's easy to imagine the "geese-are-messy" rationalization used to defend such a deplorable plan, hunting, as with other forms of lethality, are useless as a means to addressing such issues. Once killed, other geese move into the vacant habitat.

In response to our Action Alert, many people contacted the Center to express their outrage over the hunt. Thanks to a quick response, the Center's administration has abandoned its plans to allow the killing of geese on its property.

Goose News Index | Main

09/27/99

Health Officer's Claims Called Ludicrous by Public Health Experts

Monmouth County - In a commentary that appeared the the September 17th edition of  The Two River Times, New Jersey Coalition activist Sue Russell blasted Monmouth County's health officer, Lester Jargowsky, for creating an unfounded health scare to help a few county complainers create a justification for having geese rounded up and slaughtered. He successfully sold his imaginary health scare to municipal leaders so he could bring $87,000 worth of funding into his department for the summer. The Coalition has yet to find any reputable public health expert to support his hysteria that geese are a public health risk.

The commentary drives the point home:

Canada Geese Get a Bad Rap - Again
Believe in lost causes? This is your bird.

Signaling its intention to round-up and slaughter Canada geese, the Navesink River Municipalities Committee has recklessly "declared war" on the species as a "major health threat" as an implied prime source of two common waterborne parasites, Giardia sp. and Cryptosporidium.

Committee Chairman John Simpson suggested sending the geese to slaughterhouses and giving the carcasses to food banks. "Once the community understands" Mr. Simpson told The Asbury Park Press, "we can do something."

But a big part of the problem is the information that has reached the community. Interests in the County seem hell-bent on killing federally protected Canada geese but are required to show that the geese are "seriously injurious" before booking the abattoirs. Where no requisite harm remotely exists one appears to have been manufactured in violation of federal law. Let's call it an end run around the inconvenient Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

The best-kept secret in Monmouth County is this: According to state and university public health experts including the New Jersey Department of Health, goose feces are fairly innocuous, posing little or no health risks to humans. Once again, senior expert opinion strongly contradicts the alarmist anti-goose campaign run by Monmouth County Health Officer Lester W. Jargowsky.

Dr. Timothy Ford, professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and author of "Microbiological Safety of Drinking Water: United States and Global Perspective 1999," states: "Numbers of Cryptosporidium oocysts associated with Canada geese and waterfowl in general are likely to be minimal, unimportant relative to the potential for oocysts shed from other forms of wildlife and humans. In my mind, there is no possibility that the Canada goose will ever be a major route of infection. To suggest otherwise is utterly ludicrous and you can quote me."

Utterly ludicrous and presented as fact in Monmouth County.

And David S. Adam, Coordinator of Health Projects, Vector Control, Infectious and Zoonotic Disease Program for the State of New Jersey Department of Health, writes: "Giardia lamblia, as well as Cryptosporidium, is most commonly transmitted to humans by person-to-person fecal-oral contamination or by water fecally contaminated by humans or other mammals. Infection is usually asymptomatic with children infected more frequently than adults, often in the day-care setting. In summary, the role of Canada geese in the transmission of Cryptospordium or Giardia to humans is not well established, but appears to be small compared with other modes of transmission."

Mr. Adams adds that Canada geese have been wrongly blamed for beach closings: "A number of beach closings including several in New Jersey have been attributed to this cause [high fecal coliform counts attributed to Canada geese]. However, research on this subject (including surveillance conducted in New Jersey) has usually found very low levels of pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella sp. in the feces of waterfowl not exposed to human sewage effluent."

Another false alarm.

Dr. Milton Friend, former director, Wildlife Research Center Water Fowl Disease U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is adamant: "On occasion we have been wading in that stuff [feces], dead birds up to our elbows... there is not a single, documented case of any of us coming down with any kind of a disease problem as a result of Canada geese... we do not have a human health situation, not in the urban goose, not in the wild goose, not in the captive geese that we have also worked with. We do have a lot of diseases out there that can affect people. Most of them come from different places and do not come from the Canada goose and I'll leave you with that."

Giardia sp., is common throughout the world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that prevalence is higher in areas of poor sanitation and in institutions where children are not toilet-trained. The CDC lists "institutions and day-care centers as the principle mode of spread. " Principle reservoirs are listed as "humans, possibly beaver and domestic animals" -- geese aren't even mentioned.

In animals Crytosporidiosis is found almost exclusively in newborn puppies and kittens. Even then, "there has been no transmission to humans." (CDC, June 1999.)

In the recent spate of publicity, the parasites have been associated only with geese, even when there is no record of infection to humans.

How the Canada goose metamorphosed into a "major health threat" is a case study in manipulation of public -- your -- attitudes. It was done through a series of wrong inferences, insinuation, exaggeration, and omission. It appears to be [a] full-time, on-going project at taxpayer expense.

What has been going on transcends Canada geese and goes to the heart of good government, not to mention the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. A tiny fiefdom in Freehold has gone unchecked and unchallenged for too long. We have some of the answers. It's past time legislators and attorneys started asking the right questions.

In the meantime, the Canada goose -- majestic, intelligent, loyal beyond all bounds to to mate and offspring is up against it. Abandoned by bird snobs, overproduced by game managers, set-up by bureaucrats, hated by a vocal minority; all are piling on, and its future looks bleak. If you believe in lost causes, this is your bird.

Goose News Index | Main

Coalition Launches Campaign Against Disinformation in NJ

Monmouth County - The Coalition has been investigating various highly publicized claims made by Lester Jargowsky of the Monmouth County (New Jersey) Health Department concerning Canada geese and public health. Despite a long history devoid of documented cases of anyone becoming ill because of geese, he alleged that geese were a threat to public health. His office even carried out some studies in an attempt to legitimize his assertion.

We analyzed his results and allegations and presented them to some of the top academic and state public health experts in the country. Our suspicions have been unanimously confirmed: Jargowsky's assertions about geese being a health risk are way out in left field. He is clearly abusing his authority to sway public opinion against geese, using scare tactics for a small number of chronic complainers -- some influential-- that would like to have the geese killed. (Killing, incidentally, is known to be an ineffective form of goose control, because other geese just move in to the vacated area[s]). Even his collaborator at Johns Hopkins University expressed concern over Jargowsky's dubious conclusions.

Most of the health officer's disinformation has been published in a small weekly paper called the Atlanticville. These articles are often suspiciously devoid of the author's identity, and never present information from those who disagree with his claims. We recently learned that Jargowsky has, via close friends, ties to the newspaper's upper management. In light of the completely biased articles that have appeared, some have even speculated that he wrote the articles himself.

To counter this disinformation, the Coalition recently distributed around 11,000 flyers complete with mail-in petitions as an insert in one of the large local daily newspapers in Monmouth County, the  Asbury Park Press. We are pleased to report that signed petitions are rolling in. We have also received requests for copies of the petition by people who want to distribute them to their neighbors, family, friends and co-workers.

The flyer can be viewed in two formats: HTML (best for on-screen viewing) or PDF (148K) (best for printing). [The PDF file requires Acrobat Reader which is available free from Adobe].

Goose News Index | Main

07/26/99

Air Force Uses Deadly Force on Geese

Virginia - In a move that does nothing to dispel the stereotype that certain members of the military establishment, if left to their own devices, would solve all problems using violence, the upper eschelon of the Langley Air Force Base had a flock of 189 gentle Canada geese rounded up and slaughtered. The situation was mired in the usual cookie-cutter hype about the problems the geese were causing.

Clearly, the Air Force made no attempt to keep the geese out of areas using well-established non-lethal control techniques. If they had, their "problem" -- allegedly an issue of air traffic safety -- would be solved. By rounding up and killing geese on the base, all they have done is create an attractive vacancy that will lure other geese to move in -- a scenario that occurs everywhere this biologically unsound and cruel practice has been carried out.

Ironically, killing is not even the method of goose control touted by the Armed Forces Pest Management Board! Given this egregious oversight, it would be hard for the administration of the Langley Air Base to argue that it did any research on the various humane methods of goose control.

By removing and killing geese, the base is actually inducing more goose movement and flight around the airfields -- the exact opposite effect that they presumably seek. The absurdity of the base's actions, in light of their concern for air traffic safety, can only be fully appreciated when one considers that the geese they killed were molting -- flightless -- and, therefore, were no threat to aircraft at all.

Making matters worse, they carried out the roundup/killing without a federal permit, even though a regional U.S. District Judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, ruled a week earlier that federal agencies (e.g., the Air Force) are not exempt from the permit requirement. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is urging the US Department of Justice to pursue charges for this illegal act.

Several reports have painted quite a picture of the Langley base, which is a veritable officers' country club. Indeed, the killed geese were taken from what one base employee described as the "top brass' exclusive, private golf course."

According to a column in the Daily Press, when Lt. Col. Joel Carrillo told base employees that "Base had to be kept immaculate," because the commander, Col. Felix Dupre, "HATES trash," an employee piped in "...and GEESE," Carrillo became enraged, giving us a clue as to just what kind of obsessive-compulsive personality Commander Dupre must be. This explains a lot, but doesn't justify the killings or the cruelty.

Goose News Index | Main

07/16/99

Geese Win in Court
Judge rules Wildlife Services can't kill geese without permit

Washintgon, DC - 3000 geese from 21 sites in Virginia were spared slaughter this spring thanks to a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the federal wildlife exterminating agency called Wildlife Services/USDA.

Based on a lawsuit several years ago (Sierra Club vs. U.S. Forest Service), federal agencies such as Wildlife Services were given the impression that they were exempt from the provision of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and therefore weren't required to get permits to kill migratory birds (i.e., Canada geese) from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. The Humane Society of The United States, the Animal Protection Institute, and Citizens for the Preservation of Wildlife began a legal action last year challenging this loophole.

The court held that federal agencies such as Wildlife Services are not exempt from the provisions of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, thus halting this year's slaughter of Canada geese. Killings were also halted last year when the same Judge issued a temporary restraining order while deciding this case.

The idea that federal agencies are exempt from an Act of Congress (i.e., the Migratory Bird Treaty Act) that is based on an international treaty (Migratory Bird Treaty) is absurd on the most fundamental level, and we applaude Judge Kollar-Kotelly for her ruling.

If anything, Wildlife Services should be more rigorously controlled since, unlike other agencies, the actions it takes are for hire. That is, WS charges for its goose killing services. This creates a serious conflict of interest with both the spirit and letter of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.