New Jersey Town Has Approved A Radical Plan To Solve Their Geese Problem

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NY Post - A New Jersey town is planning to kill dozens of geese that have turned a public park into their personal potty — despite strong opposition from community members over the “inhumane” approach to the problem.

The Peapack and Gladstone Borough Council voted in March for a plan to hire federal wildlife officials to round up roughly 60 geese in Liberty Park next month — when they cannot fly — and gas them to death with carbon dioxide.

The council said they’ve exhausted all other options to rid the park and its pond of the nuisance geese that have taken over and called in exterminators from the US Department of Agriculture “in desperation.”

In case you weren't aware, we are right in the thick of goose attack season. Consider this a warning. For most of the year, geese are essentially harmless. Sure they can be a little annoying. But aside from the copious amounts of shit they leave behind on the golf course, all over your backyard, on the sidewalk, in the middle of the road, and literally everywhere you walk, geese typically mind their own business. 

They waddle around, pick at the grass, give the occasional honk, just regular harmless goose stuff. Sometimes they're even kinda cute. But come spring when mother geese hatch themselves a fresh gaggle of babies, they turn into vicious attack birds who won't hesitate for a second to rip your face off with their razor sharp tongue teeth should you dare approach them as they attempt to cross a busy road with their new family. I know from experience.

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But that's aside the point. It's come to my attention that New Jersey town of Peapack and Gladstone is fed up with them. Turns out their local geese's incessant shitting has been more than just a slight annoyance.

“The geese are a challenge in our town,” Councilwoman and veterinarian Jamie Murphy said at the March 5 meeting when the vote was held. 

“There’s goose poop everywhere. These toddlers and kids are running around the park,” she continued. “The reality is our park is way too small to support that many geese. It’s not good for them. It’s not good for us.” 

They refuse to sit idly by and let an army of geese turn their beloved Liberty Park into one big bird toilet. Their solution: Gas The Geese.

The plan is simple. Call in a team of wildlife Gestapo, round up the 60 geese who call Liberty Park home, lure them into their death truck with promises of seeds and berries, pump their bird lungs full of carbon dioxide. 

The plan seems extremely shortsighted to me. They seem to think eliminating 60 geese will resolve their problem. But according to data from 2018, there are 63,485 geese living in New Jersey alone. The minute you exterminate the small number of geese living in Liberty Park, a brand new flock of geese will see that there's a wide open park for the taking and promptly move their families right on in. A week after the original geese murders, Peapack and Gladstone will be right back to where they started. Then they'll have to gas another 60 birds. 

Unless they think the geese will learn that landing in Liberty Park means instant death… But the death penalty can't possibly be a deterrent for geese can it? Do they expect word to spread across the geese community that if they land in this specific area of town, that they will soon be terminated by the government? They literally have bird brains. They don't understand consequence.

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I'm worried that Peapack and Gladstone will find themselves in a vicious, never-ending cycle of bird murder. Imagine the toll it would take a person's psyche to be forced to kill 60 geese every other week. The poor low-level wildlife official who's put in charge of "goose population control" will have geese related nightmares for the rest of his life.

But there's still a chance it won't come to that. As you may have guessed, not all Peapack and Gladstonians are on board with this idea. Anytime a local government implements a plan to slaughter a group of innocent animals, there's inevitably going to be some pushback from the townsfolk. Over 2,000 people have signed a petition save the geese. People have been showing up at city council meetings to protest on the geese's behalf. Other's have even volunteered to pick up the poop themselves if that's what it takes to prevent the gassings.

ABC 7 - Now a host of others are offering other methods to shoo them away.

"Everyone's on board, the Animal Protection League is more than willing to work with them and help to implement these measures," Jonach said.

Others say they already have volunteers willing to step in and help with the negative impact of the birds.

"There's volunteers to clean up the excrement, there are volunteers to come rake, there are volunteers to pretty much take care of anything they're troubled with," DiCarlo said.

Personally, I'd take the volunteers up on that offer. There's no quicker way to turn a group of geese-lovers over to the dark side than by sentencing them to a life of cleaning up bird poop. I guarantee that after a month of cleaning up their shit, these geese-loving volunteers will grow to despise them so much that they'll start snapping their necks themselves. 

I can't tell you what the best course of action is here. But I have a strong feeling that killing merely 60 birds at a time isn't going to solve this towns geese problem. They'd be better off building a large tree stand and hiring a volunteer to sit up there with a rifle to pick off the geese one-by-one as they flock to the park. I'm willing to bet there are plenty of people in central Jersey who'd be foaming at the mouth for that opportunity. Either that, or just learn to live with the geese. Everybody else in the world seems to do it no problem. I'm not sure what makes Peapack and Gladstone think they're special.