Mute Swans

This winter the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) of New York State announced that they were going to eliminate the 2,200 Mute Swans living in the State by 2025. I have a visceral reaction to any killing—spiders wander my house unharmed—but it’s not just because I’m a goofy animal lover that I don’t like this plan. Making decisions about what is best for the environment—are we really so good at that?

Here are the reasons why the DEC has decided on this move—which has caused an outcry throughout the state, the country and even the world. A friend from Australia sent a link to a story in their papers about this plan, making us Yanks out to be pretty cruel!

Swans are not native to New York State.  There are a lot of species not native to the States. If we have to start eliminating non native species I’d like to suggest something abundant like the European Starling, not the Swan, which is estimated to be one half of one percent of the waterfowl in the state.

Swans eat the submerged aquatic vegetation that other waterfowl also eat. The two other Swans sometimes—though rarely—seen in the State are the Tundra and  Trumpeter. They hardly overlap in geography, the Tundra and Trumpeter to the north and the Mute mostly on Long Island. There are a lot of studies on SAV, which is indeed scarcer than it should be. But one idea might be to eliminate the invasive water chestnut, which clogs bays and makes it harder for SAV to thrive. Rather than kill off a few thousand swans, pull up some plants. No doubt this would be a more expensive and complicated solution. But it troubles me that we’ve gone for the quickest, easiest solution here.

Swans are aggressive to other animals and humans. This is the most ridiculous reason. All animals can be aggressive. But we don’t expect birds to be aggressive because largely we stay away from their hidden nests. But Swans are big and beautiful and people do incredibly stupid things like take photographs of their infants walking toward a bird twice the size of the child. A public education program could start to help with this problem. Mute Swans are not sweet. They are not pets. They are enormous birds that can be enormously aggressive. They need space.

Hazards to aviation. This is perhaps the real reason the swans are being eliminated and I wish everyone were honest about this. BASH (Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard)  is a major expense for the industry (though I like that the language makes is sound like birds collide with planes—as if they don’t belong in the sky—rather than planes hitting birds, like cars run over deer). “Planes hit birds all the time,” writes financial journalist Eric Uhlfelder in the New York Times. US Airways Flight 1549, which made its celebrated landing in the Hudson River struck Canada Geese, and in the past 23 years hitting birds has forced one plane a day to land prematurely. I’m going to guess that not all flights were as lucky as Flight 1549, piloted by Captain Sullenberger. The number of premature landings is an extraordinary figure, and for the safety of all—birds hit and people in those planes—something we should do something about. But we can’t kill every bird in the sky (though we do kill off about 25,000 Canada geese a year). A more inventive solution must be found. Avian radar? 

Here’s what I want to say: Let’s not first reach for a gun; let’s be more imaginative about how we can live together on this small planet.

If you want to agitate, Senate Bill S6589 supported by Tony Avella is asking for a two year moratorium on the slaughter until more evidence can be offered to kill of the Swans.