Safe Sex For Mamaroneck Geese?

The announcement by Mamaroneck officals that they had signed a contract with the U.S.D.A. to slaughter the village's population of Canadian Geese this summer has provoked a flurry of concerned responses from animal rights groups eager to persuade the village consider more humane options.

In Defense of Animals(IDA)—a 30-year-old international animal rights organization started by a veterinarian—has partnered with the CA-based Innolytics, Inc. to provide free OvoControl-G—a birth control used for Canadian Geese and ducks—to the village.  According to the Innolytics, Inc. website, the contraceptives are administered to geese once a day via pellet at a bait station and have an approximately 95 percent effectiveness rate in preventing eggs from hatching.

"Innolytic's CEO, Erick Wolf, has generously offered to provide Mamaroneck with enough Ovocontrol to treat the Mamaroneck Canada Geese flocks in the spring of 2013 at no cost to the village other than shipping charges," said a release sent out by IDA yesterday. 

The company's website indicates that OvoControl is registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and, though the effect of utilizing the pellets is similar to egg oiling, the pellets can be administered from a central feeding station versus having to locate secluded nests. 

"There is no reason to kill these highly intelligent and social geese who are part of the Mamaroneck community, and who have a right to be there,"said Anja Heister, director of IDA's Wild and Free Habitat Campaign. "This is a great opportunity for Mamaroneck to opt for a humane and long term solution that benefits both their human and geese residents."

Heister went on to say that goose slaughter was hardly a viable option for permanent eradication.

"Apart from the brutality and trauma inflicted on these sensitive birds,killing geese, or other urban wildlife, is never a solution. As long as there is desirable habitat, new geese will quickly repopulate the areas that have become vacant, locking communities into an endless, ineffective, brutal, and costly killing cycle."