Airports killing wildlife to prevent accidents

Today reports from two far-flung airports illustrate the ongoing conflict between modern human culture and animals simply doing what they do.

In New York City -- five months after Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger safely landed a US Airways jet in the Hudson River after hitting a flock of geese -- some 2,000 Canadian geese living around JFK and LaGuardia airports will be euthanized starting this week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given the USDA a permit for the euthanization, releasing the agency from the the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

The local geese (as opposed to the migratory birds that flew into the US Airways plane) will be herded into fenced areas at parks and wastewater treatment plants within five miles of the airports, put into crates and "humanely" euthanized . 

The FAA reported 9,650 bird strikes in the U.S. in 2007, and more than 73,000 in the the past eight years. The bird strikes are a particular hazard in New York City, where a congested flight path overlaps with the birds' Atlantic flyway.

Meanwhile the city of Longmont, Colorado has completed the second round of extermination of prairie dogs that inhabit the Vance Brand Municipal Airport, dropping aluminum phosphate pellets on 1,723 burrows. A wildlife biologist from the USDA is overseeing the project.

The p-dogs are a hazard, say airport officials: Airplanes can run their wheels into prairie dog burrows, flipping over and causing damage or death. The rodents also create ruts by tunneling under runways, and chew on electrical wiring. Sky divers have been injured after landing in prairie dog holes. Previous attempts to rid the airport of the prairie dogs by trapping and relocating the animals, or by putting carbon dioxide pellets in their burrows to suffocate them, had failed to solve the problem.

Prairie dog advocates are incensed. One Longmont resident noted that the extermination "brought about enormous suffering, with the animals bleeding to death, organ by organ." (The acid in the digestive system of the rodent reacts with the phosphide to generate toxic gas.)

In these times, it seems impossible to "live and let live." Our priorities, our fast-paced life, the value of human life above all other -- all conspire to create choices that pit "humane" disposal of creatures that get in our way against the exigencies of the moment. And an agency created to protect -- Fish and Wildlife, whose motto is "conserving the nature of America" -- is called in to destroy.