The Mayor of Monroe Vs. The Geese

Did Village of Monroe Mayor, Neil Dwyer, Mislead The Public Concerning Recent Geese Mitigation Methods?

I’ve been a Monroe resident, on and off, since 1988. In that time, the Village of Monroe has feuded with the local wildlife like they were the Hatfields and the geese were the McCoys.

I don’t speak for everyone who walks around the Millponds for their exercise, but my Dad and I are out there nearly every day when it’s above fifty-degrees. The people we encounter, usually retirees, don’t mind the geese at all.

They absolutely mind the goose shit that’s left all over the sidewalk, but they don’t mind the geese. In fact, most people walking around the ponds in town will tell you that it’s kind of nice having them.

A lot of the retirees we encounter are transplants from New York City, where you don’t have the geese. Or really much of anything outside of rats, seagulls, pigeons, and an occasional raccoon.

Of course, there are others who don’t feel that way at all in Monroe. To them, the geese are nuisance, and the sooner that they’re removed, the better.

And they don’t care how the geese are removed, whether it’s screwing around with their eggs, chasing them with dogs, putting up decoy geese (yes, that really happened), harassing them with remote controlled boats (see below), or in the most recent case, rounding them up and gassing them to death.

Video provided by a concerned resident of Monroe of a robotic boat being used to harass the geese in August of 2023.

That brings us to the February 6th, 2024 Monroe Village Board Meeting:

Specifically, skip ahead to 1:49:44. The rest of the meeting was incredibly boring, but I promise to share the other highlights of it with you tomorrow.

Also, a side note:

Public comment on non-agenda items really should be moved to the front of all our local board meetings.

I can’t imagine sitting through nearly two hours of the above meeting just to ask one question. The public has shit to do. The elected officials do as well, but the difference is, it’s their job.

Making people wait to ask questions when they have work the next day is not great (and also often used as a tactic to limit speech. If you know you have to sit through three hours of really boring contractual business, you’re less likely to attend a meeting of your local government.)

Both Monroe and Woodbury are part of a very small group of municipalities in New York State that limit public comment to 3 minutes (or five, in Woodbury) and have public comment on non-agenda items at the end of the meetings. To the credit of both the Town of Woodbury and the Village of Woodbury, they haven’t really enforced the five minute rule at recent meetings.

Back to the geese …

During public comment, Michele Shenker asked Village of Monroe Mayor, Neil Dwyer, if there was a lethal goose round up that occurred at Crane Park, and if there were plans to do another one in 2024.

The Mayor didn’t answer the question the first time Mrs. Shenker asked, so she asked again. Mayor Dwyer then said, “I don’t know what they [USDA] employed, what things they did.” She asked again and the mayor said he didn’t know, but he’ll ask.

So, before we go any further …

Documents obtained by Mrs. Shenker, and shared with The Monroe Gazette, confirm there was a lethal goose round up that took place in late June / Early July of 2023 at the Millpond.

44 Geese were rounded up and euthanized.

So, to answer the first question: Yes. There was a lethal goose round up that occurred at Crane Park in 2023. Just before the Village’s Fourth of July Fireworks celebration.

Did The Mayor Know?

On Friday, June 23rd, 2023, Mayor Dwyer received an email from an unknown party at the USDA APHIS Wildlife Services office. The name of this individual is blacked out.

But the email to the Mayor includes an attachment with an intergovernmental agreement between the Village of Monroe and the USDA that states under “Services Provided” that the geese are rounded up and brought to a “poultry processor to be prepared for human consumption.” It’s not clear if this is a polite euphemism for gassing the geese.

But here’s how it usually goes when the USDA comes to town:

Now, I like Mayor Dwyer. He was one of the two United Monroe candidates that I helped to back. The other was Tony Cardone, but we all know how that one worked out. So, it’s entirely possible the mayor did not review the agreement and what was in it.

But.

And, I’m no handwriting expert, someone in the village office did sign the agreement, and that agreement did layout clearly what was going to happen to the geese. It also looks like the mayor’s signature on the document:

Non-Lethal Ways to Manage the Geese

Doreen Frega of the Animal Protection League of New Jersey spoke next before the board. She shared a litany of non-lethal tactics the Village of Monroe can use to deter the geese from gathering at the Millpond.

Doreen mentioned that the Animal Protection League had previously worked with the parks department in Edgewater, New Jersey, who had a similar problem to what the village of Monroe is currently experiencing.

I spoke with Greg Franz, who is the Borough Administer for Edgewater, New Jersey, about the geese mitigation suggestions provided by the Animal Protection League of New Jersey. Here’s what he told me:

The Borough of Edgewater used to participate in the USEPA geese mitigation program whereby geese were captured and euthanized.  This program was developed with the FAA to reduce the geese population in the most congested air space in the country with four (4) major airports as well as the result of the commercial airline from LaGuardia airport landing in the Hudson River known a “miracle on the Hudson”.  Geese have no natural predator for the exception of the occasional Coyote.  What compounds the issue is people feed geese bread and other human food that actually contribute to their health demise as well as increased defecation.  APL asked if the Borough would consider non-lethal means of geese mitigation and the borough complied.  Increased signage “don’t feed the geese”, along with blinking lights, noise alarms, and dogs seem to help.  You have to stay on top of it to control.

I spoke with Mrs. Frega about what the Village of Monroe can do to help control the geese situation, which Mayor Dwyer described to her as “a major problem.”

Doreen told me that the Village can implement a “no feeding, binding ordinance with a fine and proper signage” as feeding the geese is one of the major contributors to them wanting to hang out around the ponds. Unfortunately for the geese, eating what people are feeding them can cause a condition called “angel wing” which prevents the geese from flying away and leaving the area.

So, it’s a vicious cycle. People want to feed the geese. The geese get sick and can’t fly away. The geese become a nuisance (to some), leading to the need to remove them.

At the time of this writing, Mrs. Freega is waiting to hear back from Mayor Dwyer to schedule a site visit with the Animal Protection League of New Jersey.

During the site visit the Wildlife Mitigation Team will examine the park and advise the mayor on non-lethal solutions that can be used. The Village Board was also provided with a list of potential non-lethal solutions during this meeting.

Mayor Dwyer did not return multiple emails and calls requesting comment on this situation.