Crows in New York State under attack

We, the undersigned, call upon you to urge you to intervene on behalf of the crow population under attack in New York State by the cities of Troy and Albany, in association with the USDA-Wildlife Services.

Last winter, during the months of December and January, they embarked on a campaign to eradicate the crows winter roosts in these cities through the use of fireworks, lasers and an intercom playing crow distress calls during the hours when the birds gather in flocks and fly to the trees they call home, in order to spend the winter months.

According to the Times Union article titled Trouble flocking to cities of Sunday, January 13, 2002, Albany and Troy officials said they have not ruled out using a poison if the nonlethal methods prove to be ineffective. Please note that the same article mentions Mr. Richard Chipman, USDAs New York state director of Wildlife Services, stating that DRC-1339, a pesticide that specifically kills crows, gulls, blackbirds, starlings, pigeons and other birds that gather in large groups, can be an important management tool, and the USDA has already attempted to register six new bird-killing pesticides with the state in May of 2002, many of them containing DRC-1339.

Experts such as Kevin McGowan, a Cornell University ornithologist who studies crows, along with many others, say that long term success of similar dispersal techniques in other cities have failed and more often than not, made the situation worse because there is no way to predict where the crows will set up camp next, which partly explains the increase in population in cities that never had such problem with crows. They have been killed and evicted from many cities and communities from Chatham, Ontario (Canada), down New York state (Auburn, Cortland, Utica), and now Albany and Troy as well.

The same experts also note that relocation efforts are more effective when initiated by early fall, when the crows begin to gather, their numbers are smaller, and the young can learn to find new roosting places for the winter months, and not during December or January (as in the cases of the cities of Troy and Albany respectively), when they are already established in their territories, and blasting them out of their trees in the darkness and freezing temperatures of winter, is a practice that we find cruel, inhumane and unnecessary.

Sadly, since January 13, 2003, the USDA, and the city of Albany, (which by the way, paid the USDA-NYS Wildlife Services the amount of u$s 6,000.00 of our tax money for the job), are back harassing the birds, and trying to evict them from the SUNY campus.
It is evident that these relocation measures are not successful by the fact that the SUNY area did not have a crow roosting problem until December 2001 and January 2002, when the evicted crows from Troy and the Albany Medical Center location, moved there searching for a safe place to sleep at night. Now, we dont claim to be biologists or crow experts (like some at the USDA-NYS Division of Wildlife Services claim to be, such as Mr. Richard Chipman) but nonetheless, we realized last winter, just by simple observation driving through the SUNY campus area, that this was becoming a crow roosting site, and surely enough, today, an exact year after the fact, we have the City of Albany and the USDA trying to manage (as they call it), a crow roosting problem there.

Our question to Mayor Jennings and Mr. Chipman is this: Why didnt the USDA (with all its self-proclaimed expertise in the matter), along with the city of Albany, act proactively last winter and implement their so-called successful and non-lethal measures back then at the SUNY campus site? Is it because there would not have been any more money to be made by the USDA by preventing the problem from becoming one?, or because they really know that the measures are not successful, and therefore, they are just trying to get our tax paying dollars to finance their pet projects and ultimately implement their plans of poisoning the crows when all other measures prove to have failed? The right approach would have been to prevent the SUNY roosting site in the first place by playing the crow distress calls and the pyrotechnics by late September and early October of 2002, not now, when the roost is already established.

We want to express our opposition regarding the harassment campaign towards the crow population in New York State by its city officials along with the USDA, and let them know that we seriously oppose our tax dollars to be used for such projects. Instead, we urge them to learn to share our vast state and nation with the animal population in a more tolerant and humane manner, instead of resorting to killing and wiping out every single species that presents an inconvenience, a nuisance, or the opportunity to make a profit.

Please remember that the real threat to our society is not the crows, but rather, terrorist attacks (internal and external), and the loss of moral values in all areas of our society, where school age children shoot and kill each other, and corporations misappropriate their employees retirement funds, leaving them penniless overnight.

Furthermore, we demand of you that in your capacity of elected or appointed officials, do concentrate federal, state, and city governments efforts and tax dollars on the really important issues, such as homeland security, the economy, Social Security solvency, the environment, education, health care, and most importantly, solving the deficit of the New York State budget, instead of chasing crows out of their winter roosts.

Sincerely,

Citizens of New York State against Crows harassment. January 14, 2003