Officials Euthanize Nearly 400 Geese From Prospect Park

Would that work on a moving plane? I don't know for sure, but if the sound is so species-specific that you can set which species you're trying to scare away, wouldn't the high speed of the planes cause the frequency to shift up or down (depending on whether the plane was moving towards or away from the geese), and make it not sound right?

The Coppola version of this would use Ride of the Valkyries instead, of course.

Yeah, and all kinds of stuff at Ruby Ridge and for David Koresh in Wac[k]o.

Which prompted him to torch the place. :shock:

Let us hope the geese don't take a similar turn.

so we should equip planes with special devices and let Geese overpopulate and upset the balance of local indigenous birds and plants? I am sorry, but this whole thing, while it was disgusting, is a sentimental response. Why should this invasive species take over the park and why is there no discussion of population control? I keep hearing whacky ideas so that we never have to kill a Canadian Goose again. I am sure you will LOVE the Peninsula when it is a carpet of wall-to-wall goose crap and I am sure the ducks will love it when they are driven away by this very aggressive species.

I say this as someone who does not approve how it was handled but I do think something needed to be done if not for the FAA, for the balance of "nature" in the park.

Oh, ha...WTGirl did not actually type Penis. She wrote p e n i n s u l a.

That was an old word-filter hold-over from when someone was spamming these boards with a zillion duplicate ads for The Pen|nsula apartments somewhere in NJ.

Gotta love unintended consequences.

R-Rated Warning:

Carnivore wrote: [quote=inpixels]...make it not sound right...
LRADS are like laser beams the military uses it for crowd control.
obviously the sound can be so loud and concentrated that it could kill the bird but you wouldn't crank it up

But if the source of the sound is moving (attached to a plane), the frequency will still shift, even if it's focused. It's the doppler effect.

Ii'll email the company and ask

Mougar wrote: [quote=inpixels][quote=Carnivore][quote=inpixels]...make it not sound right...
LRADS are like laser beams the military uses it for crowd control.
obviously the sound can be so loud and concentrated that it could kill the bird but you wouldn't crank it up

But if the source of the sound is moving (attached to a plane), the frequency will still shift, even if it's focused. It's the doppler effect.

Ii'll email the company and ask

It's more fun if we do it ourselves! Most bird strikes occur at maybe a few thousand feet so we'll say the speed of sound is 335 m/s. The plane is going to be going maybe 100-150 m/s. In Sully's case he was at about 3000 feet and I couldn't find his speed at the time of ingestion, so I'm guessing a little there. We'll assume the speed of the birds is negligible relative to the planes, it was maybe on the order of 10 m/s.

At a 0 degree angle to the birds, the doppler shift would be between 30-45% given the above assumptions (100 / 335 ~ 0.3, 150 / 335 ~ 0.45). If the birds were not directly in front of the plane, the shift could be calculated by multiplying it by the cosine of the angle between them. At a minimum the doppler shift would be 0 when the geese are approaching perpendicular to the plane. So under normal conditions, the frequencies may be anywhere between 0 and 45% higher to a first approximation.

You could split the difference and make the base sounds have a frequency 20% higher than the actual, and you'd have an effective range of +/- 20%. That's a pretty wide range and I don't know if the birds would still be frightened away if the sound was that far off.

Also keep in mind that the sound repellers aren't like force fields. The birds are still going to have to fly out of the way after hearing it, and given the plane is traveling 10+ times faster than they are, that doesn't give them very much time to move. The flock itself also takes up a large area, so even if the front bird is repelled by the sound and easily clears the plane, the birds at the tail end may still hit plane.
Flawless victory!

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/second-and-third-thoughts-over-killing-of-prospect-park-geese/#more-198320

Rather than killing the geese, we should ship them all to Arizona, and let the cops there decide whether they look sufficiently suspicious to warrant demanding to see their green cards.

Or would that be species profiling?

I was in Windsor Terrace the other day and I saw a sign that said "MISSING from Prospect Park: 400 Canada Geese" I was going to call the guy and tell him/her not to bother looking any more, but for some weird reason there was no contact info on the flyer. Hopefully they spot this thread before they waste too much more time looking for the geese.

Lawsuit? Not so much. Where are the damages? Animals are considered property by law, so the worst the state would be liable for would be the replacement value of the animals ($0). And that would be if someone could establish ownership (unlikely).

Carnivore wrote: Lawsuit? Not so much. Where are the damages? Animals are considered property by law, so the worst the state would be liable for would be the replacement value of the animals ($0). And that would be if someone could establish ownership (unlikely).

I've been psychologically injured by this incident so let's start at $100 million there, smart guy.

NY Civic wrote: THE GEESE RETURN TO PROSPECT PARK; DON’T TRY TO FOOL WITH MOTHER NATURE

The geese are back in Prospect Park.

According to a count this morning from two of our readers, Ed Bahlman and Anne-Katrin Titze, 28 Canada Geese have resettled at Prospect Park Lake since their feathered friends were rounded up and gassed to death on July 8th.

We have every reason to believe that our readers' count is accurate, as it was Ms. Titze who conducted the official New York State Ornithological Association and NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Waterfowl Count of the area in January 2010.

Although the return of the geese is fair news for fans of the local fowl, we were hesitant to report it for fear that we would be sentencing these new settlers to the same fate as their predecessors. Upon further reflection, however, we were convinced that these geese would certainly not go unnoticed by the authorities, and so the best chance of advocating for their safety was to make public the fact of their residence.

The return of the geese deepens our suspicion that the eradication of the Prospect Park 400 was not adequately thought through. Does the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is said to have ordered the mass killing, intend to hunt down these 28 geese too, along with those yet to join them? Are they to be gassed on a rolling basis or will the executioner come once a year after mating season, while they are molting and unable to fly?

Clearly, there are problems with the government's explanation of its actions. As we pointed out in our column on June 16th, the seven-mile kill zone extending from both LaGuardia and J.F.K. designated by the Agriculture Department for geese removal, does not accurately encompass Prospect Park, which is between 9 and 10 miles away from both airports. In a follow-up piece to our article, The New York Times confirmed our measurements.

We still maintain the public deserves more information about the government's policy of geese removal. We do not dismiss the possibility that the removal of some geese may be necessary for air safety, but there are unanswered questions about the Brooklyn geese, the cruelty of their execution and the disposition of their bodies. We believe that before more geese and goslings are butchered, a clear statement of procedures and alternatives is needed. The government requires an EIS for projects with less environmental effect than this mass ansercide.

We share this planet with millions of other species. We should not exterminate animals without clear evidence that it is necessary to do so to safeguard human life.

Danny Hellman wrote:
There's nothing pre-industrial about train travel which, if it were expanded and modernized, would be a cleaner and more comfortable alternative to air travel.

Not so simple...
Here's an interesting article from the Economist.

http://www.economist.com/node/16636101