Is Killing Animals The Answer To Airline Safety?

Posted by | January 17, 2009 16:53 | Filed under: Top Stories


The New York Post advances its coverage of the plane crash in New York Harbor by promoting the notion that the only way to stay safe in the air is to kill geese.

 

“Round them up – and get rid of them!” Or even kill them if you like.

 

 

That’s the sure answer to eliminating the potentially deadly Canada geese that threaten air travel around New York, says wildlife biologist Steve Garber, who once ran the wildlife-mitigation program at Kennedy, Laguardia and Newark airports.

 

 

The paper goes on to write that “birds have been a danger to aviation since the days of Orville and Wilbur Wright.  But there are ways other than genocide to deal with the issue.

 

“It gets as simple as banging pots and pans and getting out of your vehicle to just shoo them away,” said John Ostrom, a Minneapolis airport executive and chairman of the Bird Strike Committee-USA, a volunteer group of airline, government and wildlife experts formed in 1991 to share information.

 

Nevertheless, in New York, animals are routinely destroyed in an effort to keep the airways safe.

 

When all else fails, marksmen pull out a shotgun and kill birds – sometimes to the chagrin of conservationists.

 

The Port Authority said it has a multimillion-dollar program to chase birds away, but can only do so much to protect planes once they are in the air.

 

It said it kills thousands of birds every year in the marshes and tidal flats around La Guardia and Kennedy airports, and uses guns, pyrotechnics and hunting hawks to drive away seagulls and other birds.

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Copyright 2009 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

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