Why Geese Matter
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Marc Bekoff, Ph.D.
July 2020

Animal Rights Articles ~ Why Geese Matter

Geese are sentient, emotional beings who connect many people to nature.

Denver's geese killing program has got it all wrong.

Geese are sentient, highly emotional beings who connect countless people to nature. Despite their natural beauty and the value they add to a wide variety of urban landscapes, geese all too often are labeled as "pests" and routinely killed in heinous and inhumane ways without any sort of respect or decency for who they truly are. Denver is guilty of such violence. United Poultry Concern's President Dr. Karen Davis notes, "It's quite likely the geese were gassed to death with carbon dioxide while in the transport crates: a slow, agonizing death of suffocation, terror, panic and pain. Individual birds die at different rates as individuals and it can take many hours for them all to be dead. Also, a bird who seemed dead can revive and will then likely be strangled, beaten with a bat or some other bludgeoning instrument, or both."

In 2019, at the behest of Denver Parks & Recreation (DPR), Wildlife Services, a program of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that is well-known for its rampant killing ways, slaughtered more than 1600 geese across the city of Denver, and in 2020 they killed more than 400 geese.

As of today, DPR have said there will be no more killing in 2020 and that killing will be unnecessary in 2021. Officials of DPR have not yet put in writing that it will employ only non-lethal options in 2021, despite the fact that many such alternatives are readily available, including stopping geese from landing and nesting in the first place, growing grasses that do not attract the geese, hazing, using model predators, and using drones to scare-off or deter the geese who come to Denver parks because they contain many features the geese love.

Many of the same people who welcomed them with open arms suddenly favor killing them. Some who are responsible for killing these fascinating birds claim they really don't like doing it, but have to because they have no choice. Taking a life is serious business, so it's difficult to understand why they kill these birds when they say they really don't want to and non-lethal options are readily available....

 

Read Marc's entire article here (PDF)...

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