Laptop Battery The captured geese were squeezed 40 or 50 at a time into a makeshift gas chamber attached to the bed of a pickup truck. Once the truck was filled, carbon dioxide was pumped into the chamber and the birds slowly asphyxiated.
Thinkpad The process took slightly more than 10 minutes, during which the geese at first were calm and then started to flap their wings and honk wildly, searching for a way to escape. The birds eventually succumbed.
Microsoft By late afternoon Wednesday, Wildlife officials at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge Service had captured and killed more than 400 Canada geese.
Laptop Computers They say the planned culling was a huge success. It was done because the geese eat away vegetation needed by migratory birds.
Laptop Computer But not everybody is pleased with the day's events - including some who were involved.
Desktop Computer "I'm not for (capturing and killing the geese). I'm just doing it as part of the job," said Kate Bollie, 22, an environmental-policy graduate student from West Palm Beach, Fla. who is interning at Forsythe. "I guess you just have to put your feelings aside."
Notebooks Bollie was one of the 15 people who donned rubber hip waders and sloshed their way through waist-high mud and shallow waters to corral the birds that have made a permanent home in the refuge.
Lenovo "It went much better than expected. It was beyond my wildest dream," said Jorge Coppen, a biologist with the National Wildlife Refuge Service.
Hard Drive Coppen and a team of Wildlife workers, volunteers and interns assembled for a predawn attack on the geese. They eventually captured and euthanized all 450 birds permitted under federal guidelines.
Travelstar They originally had estimated the Canada goose population at 585 birds. Coppen said the actual number was closer to 1,500.
Gateway "We had to release an additional 400 to 450 geese that were in the trap," Coppen said.
Laptop Parts A flock of at least 500 geese were spotted in another area of the 1,400-acre pools of brackish water near the refuge's Brigantine impoundment system.
Software It took two roundups and more than six hours to corral the geese.
Hard Drives Becky Smith, 22, was visibly shaken after the first run.
Electronics Tears streaming down her face, she watched as team members methodically gassed the first 88 geese.
Canon "I can't think about that," said the Absecon resident, who is interning at the refuge. "I didn't think it was going to be this bad.
Desktop Pc "This is not what I signed up for," said the recent college graduate who plans to work as an entomologist.
Desktop Computers The dead birds were removed from the chamber, checked for tracking tags and loaded onto a backhoe.
Think Pad Tom Holdsworth, a maintenance worker at Forsythe, buried the carcasses in an area of the refuge workers call the boneyard.
Repair "It's a sad thing, but it has to be done," Holdsworth said as the first round of geese were led ashore.
Data Recovery U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials, who oversee the refuge, issued Forsythe operators a permit to cull the Canada geese population, based on a continuing threat to other bird species.
Cisco Several different types of birds, including migratory Canada geese, use the 45,000-acre refuge as a stopping point during the winter migration period.
Keyboard The problem, says Forsythe, is the subspecies of Canada geese that live there, eating vegetation normally consumed by other waterfowl.
Monitor Experts say this is the only way to solve the problem.
Desktop Others disagree.
Infosys Nancy Beall, head of the Atlantic County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said she was "horrified" to learn the birds had been killed.
Refurbished Laptops "I think it's a horrible thing. I just have to think there has to be some other way to handle this problem," she said.
Wipro She said goose roundups and killings are typical of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Lap Top "(They) have nothing to do with fish, game or wildlife. This is just more state government crap," Beall said of the federally approved killings.
Refurbished She said wildlife officials could find other ways to discourage Canada geese from becoming resident.
Memory If they cannot, "then I think they need to get a job at Wal-Mart instead," Beall laughed.
Intel Coppen said the Forsythe refuge would like to see the resident Canada goose population at Forsythe come down even further.
As400 "If we had between 200 and 400 living in the salt marsh, that would probably be enough," he said.
Averatec Forsythe is likely to apply for a depredation permit next year.
Hardware By Jerrold Staas Haught
The Press of Atlantic City - 7/3/2003
Topic: Birding
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