In late June, the geese living at Rings Pond were removed by the United States Department of Agriculture’s wildlife division. It didn’t take long for a new flock to take its place.
A resolution to form a geese committee is expected to be on the table, before the Town Board, at Monday’s regular meeting.
Supporters for the safety of the geese, which cohabitate around Rings Pond with the ducks and swans, were in full force at the Town of Cornwall work session meeting Tuesday evening.
They came with signs, but many sat silently as resident Tom DiCarrado addressed the board. There was some confusion about who would be forming the geese committee, proposed at a previous board meeting, and its function.
Supervisor Kevin Quigley said the board would be responsible for forming the committee and naming interested parties to it. He said it would be responsible for determining how to manage the geese through non-fatal means. The Town Board would then be held accountable to review those recommendations. Quigley has received numerous e-mails from those interested in serving on the committee.
Deputy Supervisor Mary Beth Greene-Krafft assured supporters no action would be taken by the board until those recommendations are considered, but the geese can’t be removed and killed until molting season, which falls betwen June 15 and July 15.
Geese, within a seven-mile radius of Stewart International Airport, have been deemed, by the Air National Guard, to be a threat to aircraft. Sometime at the end of June, a team of wildlife biologists from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division removed geese from Rings Pond and Donahue Memorial Park in Cornwall-on-Hudson. The geese were trapped and taken to a facility where the fowl were processed for human consumption.
Although the pond was vacant of geese for about a week, a new flock slowly returned.
Rick Gioia, a Cornwall-on-Hudson resident, said it’s humans who are responsible for the geese not following normal migratory patterns. If residents didn’t feed the geese, they would have no reason to stay.