Peapack-Gladstone, a small New Jersey town of around 2,500, is about an hour and a half from NYC and a few weeks away from executing 60 geese via portable gas chamber. Officials claim that goose shit is serious.
The mass killing will occur in the coming weeks, when the geese are molting and cannot fly. The town's leadership says the slaughter is necessary because the birds are soiling Liberty Park, a green space that surrounds a 1-acre pond in the town's center.
Officials say the birds' excrement is creating a health hazard. But locals are outraged and have collected 6,000 signatures in an online petition opposing the massacre.
Killing the flock during their molting period seems excessive, even cruel. The city council is naturally concerned with the health of its constituency and would prefer that goose poop not contaminate public green space and waterways. But manicured lawns, picturesque bodies of water and pruned shrubs look just as good to geese as they do people.
Nancy Minich, a landscape architect who consults the Animal Protection League of New Jersey, described the vegetation around the pond in Liberty Park as "goose candy."
"They have acres of mowed lawn, which is a welcome mat for geese, and then there's water," she said. "It's heaven for geese. It says, 'geese come over here.'"
Rosemary Misdary, Gothamist
Goose decimation, the Humane Society argues, is only a temporary solution to poop pollution. A long-lasting alternative that would best accomodate sanitation needs and quell continued goose attraction would involve changing the look of green spaces to be less enticing to the birds.
Or, get some dogs to chase them around. It worked in Brooklyn.
Don't goose this one, New Jersey.
