New Jersey town plans mass execution of geese for pooping in park

Dozens of geese that landed in a small New Jersey town may have reached their final destination because they are pooping in the wrong park.

The pastoral community of Peapack-Gladstone plans to kill around 60 of the honking waterfowl by rounding them up and sending them to the gas chamber, according to interviews and town council meetings.

The mass killing will occur in the coming weeks, when the geese are molting and cannot fly. The town’s leadership says the slaughter is necessary because the birds are soiling Liberty Park, a green space that surrounds a 1-acre pond in the town's center.

Officials say the birds' excrement is creating a health hazard. But locals are outraged and have collected 6,000 signatures in an online petition opposing the massacre.

“They'll get rid of one flock, which is the most cruel, horrific form of punishment to an animal," said Doreen Frega, a director at Animal Protection League of New Jersey. "It's animal cruelty at its highest level. Towns should not do this, because there are so many nonlethal ways in the 21st century.”

The town has inked a nearly $45,000 contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services to wipe out the gaggle over the next five years at Liberty Park — rejecting advocates' pleas that they use methods that are cheaper, more effective and more humane.

“We do hold humans in higher regard than animals,” Mayor Mark Corigliano said at a town meeting on June 6. “Their [human] health and well-being is our responsibility.”

The mayor and members of the town council did not return repeated requests for comment. Councilmember Julie Sueta, the lone opponent of the gassing, declined to comment.

Peapack-Gladstone has about 2,500 residents. It's roughly 50 miles from New York City, or a 90-minute NJ Transit ride from Manhattan's Penn Station.

In 2023, Wildlife Services killed more than 24,000 geese nationwide, according to agency data. The operations typically occur during the molting season, when the birds are shedding their flight feathers and growing new ones. Officials often use a mobile gas chamber pumped full of carbon dioxide.

In some states, including New York, the goose meat is sent to food banks. It's not immediately clear what would happen with the goose meat from Peapack-Gladstone.

A similar controversy roiled Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in 2010, when Wildlife Services officials gassed 400 geese. The agency said the move was necessary to protect aviation safety. Just a year earlier, an airplane safely landed in the Hudson River after striking a flock of geese in an event that has come to be known as the "Miracle on the Hudson."

At a vigil for the Prospect Park geese, then-state Sen. Eric Adams delivered emotional remarks.

“Geese do not need to adjust to us,” he said. “We have to adjust to them.”

The birds have not returned in such large numbers to Prospect Park since the killing.

In Peapack-Gladstone, officials say the geese must die because they’re leaving too much excrement in the small green space on Main Street.

“With the number of geese we have, their fecal matter is contaminating that water and causing all sorts of detriment to it,” Councilmember Jamie Murphy said.

She said she first approached the Department of Agriculture about the town’s goose problem last year out of “desperation.”

“There’s goose poop everywhere," said Murphy. "There’s toddlers and kids running around the park."

A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture wrote on Thursday that the agency had not yet killed any geese at the park.

But killing geese is only a "temporary fix" according to the nonprofit Humane Society, which argues that modifying the habitat to deter the birds is the most effective method for getting rid of geese.

Nancy Minich, a landscape architect who consults the Animal Protection League of New Jersey, described the vegetation around the pond in Liberty Park as “goose candy.”

“They have acres of mowed lawn, which is a welcome mat for geese, and then there's water," she said. "It's heaven for geese. It says, 'geese come over here.'”

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden and some Long Island towns have used border collies to scare off geese without hurting them. But the operation takes weeks and requires return visits to clear out newcomers.

Residents and animal advocacy groups in Peapack-Gladstone pushed for humane alternatives to the planned massacre at meetings with officials for more than three months. The Animal Protection League offered to pay for barriers and landscape modifications. Residents volunteered to regularly clean up goose excrement. One advocate told town leaders that she would take all the geese to her 170-acre animal rescue farm, the Barnyard Sanctuary, in New Jersey's Warren County.

Still, the mayor and five out of the six town councilmembers have remained steadfast in their commitment to the fowl gas chamber.

“People want instant solutions, but the humane alternatives are far cheaper and more effective than the USDA coming to euthanize the geese in these little gas chambers,” said Minich.

Opponents of the expected killing said they are planning a protest on June 29 at Teterboro Airport. Organizers said the Department of Agriculture exterminated 827 geese at that airport in 2022.