In what has come to be known as “Sully’s Revenge” (by me, just now), wildlife biologists herded about 400 geese from Brooklyn’s ginormous Prospect Park into cages last week, then “took them to a nearby building where they were gassed with lethal doses of carbon dioxide.”

A spokesman told the New York Times that the goal is to improve aviation and passenger safety, and the paper says the federal government has been doing this in NYC since US Airways Flight 1549 was taken down by geese in January 2009. But the difference this time is how drastic the culling seems, at lest to people who used to go to the park to stare at the geese.

Last summer, 1,235 were rounded up at 17 sites around the city and later killed. But the Prospect Park culling appears to be among the biggest, and its scope mortified some residents.

“It’s a horrible end,” said Anne-Katrin Titze, who went to the park nearly every morning to feed the geese. “It’s eerie to see a whole population gone. There’s not one goose on this lake. It looks as though they’ve been Photoshopped out.”

“400 Park Geese Die, for Human Fliers’ Sake” [New York Times]

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