From:
Karen Davis
[karen@upc-online.org]
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2020 1:14 PM
To:
scott.gilmore@denvergov.org
Subject: Thank you for your messages
July 10, 2020
Attention: Scott Gilmore, Executive Director
Denver Department of Parks & Recreation
Dear Mr. Gilmore:
Thank you for your phone message and email on Wednesday, July 8, 2020 regarding your extermination of Canada geese in Denver this year and last year. What comes across to me in your email is your lack of empathy for the geese and their families and feelings, and an eagerness to extenuate your decision to destroy defenseless birds for petty “offenses” that could and should be handled responsibly and with dignity.
I believe your claim – that everyone but one person you spoke with about your massacre “understands” your “incredibly difficult decision” – is mistaken. What is understood is that, at best, you are so deeply conditioned by management attitudes that you really cannot see.
Reading your email, I am struck by your saying that you are “of African-American heritage,” as if this identity could somehow mitigate the suffering and abusiveness you authorized. Invoking your racial heritage to deflect attention from the geese invites annoyance, rather than exoneration. If anything, being a member of a traditionally oppressed, unjustly treated group should make one more, not less, compassionate toward other oppressed groups – regardless of species.
As for introducing “children of color and their families to the great outdoors”: not only is this beside the point, but it raises the question – points to the irony – of people so small-hearted compared to the great outdoors that they can’t come up with anything better than mass-destruction of wild birds over droppings and nesting behavior.
You wrote to one person: “You can look at the documents and you can see we are using all the non-lethal methods.” Please clarify what non-lethal methods are being employed.
You describe yourself as “managing ecosystems and not single species.” In fact, you are managing single species, and “managing ecosystems” amounts too often to harming ecosystems in favor of superficial human desires. Natural ecosystems seldom if ever benefit from human encroachment and “management.”
I was interested to learn that the “overpopulation” of Canada geese in Denver is a result of the deliberate establishment of breeding populations of Canada geese in Colorado by CO Parks and Wildlife and the US Fish and Wildlife Service during the 1950s into the 1970s. As with turkeys in the early 20th century, I assume this endeavor was largely undertaken for the sake of hunting including “recreational” hunting of the geese.
Perhaps by next year, you and your colleagues will have developed a compassionately practical way of relating to the Canada geese as opposed to guns, gassing, clubs, poison, electric shock, strangulation, and god knows what methods of torture and terror you’ve inflicted and seek, dishonorably, to justify. All you’ve done is to make the world a sadder, more miserable and depleted place.
Sincerely,
Karen Davis, PhD, President
United Poultry Concerns
12325 Seaside Road, PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405
Office: 757-678-7875
Email: Karen@UPC-online.org
Website: www.upc-online.org
https://www.upc-online.org/ducks/200708_protest_canada_geese_massacre_in_denver.html