Regular visitors to the city's parks are well familiar with the swans, which bob elegantly through the waterways and perch delicately on the grasses—at least until they've rested up enough to go back to menacing children and pets with their poor temperaments. You really haven't picnicked in Prospect Park until you've fled in terror from a pissed mute swan who has its sights set on your sandwich.
To The Department of Environmental Conservation, however, the swans aren't so much a picturesque nuisance as they are a Scourge To Be Eradicated. In December, the agency drafted up an Orwellian "management plan," which calls for the total elimination of the winged beasts by 2025.
"Under the proposed regulations, the mute swan would be designated as a 'prohibited species,' which would prohibit the sale, importation, purchase, transport, introduction or propagation of mute swans in New York," it reads. That's a tricky directive, primarily because it's much, much too late to ban the bird's importation or introduction—that happened when sybaritic Europeans transported the swans here in the 1800s for use as living lawn ornaments. Around 500 were discharged into the wild around 1910, and they've proliferated ever since.
But times have changed, and now the report warns that without swift, aggressive human intervention, mute swans may very well threaten our lives as we know them, scuttling around the subways and crawling up through sinks and into our homes, where they will hiss at and poop on our children. We mustn't stand for this.
Without management, the only factors that may help to slow swan population growth are flooding of nests, predation of cygnets, starvation during severe winters, and collisions with power lines or other structures. In the absence of human intervention, the number of free-ranging mute swans in New York is likely to increase until the species is common throughout most of the state.
That, of course, simply will not do. The report adds that Maryland (with vocal public support!) has successfully culled its mute swan population, and certainly every New Yorker aches to have more in common with Maryland. Of course, you can't just go in and start gassing birds (oh wait), meaning that considerable outreach will be required to convince the hand-wringing public that it's really OK to kill mute swans because they're invasive, which is certainly their fault. Here, have an informational pamphlet!
"Outreach efforts are needed to inform the general public (as well as wildlife rehabilitators, game bird breeders, and others) that mute swans are a non-native species that has the potential to adversely impact native wildlife and their habitats," the report explains. It also notes that not all swans are on the chopping block—look, we'll still have trumpeter swans and tundra swans, which are native species and are therefore pardoned. Their presence, the agency hopes, will "satisfy some of the public desire to see free-ranging swans in New York, so outreach efforts will direct some interests to those native species."
Once the public agrees that we really will be better off without mute swans, the report delves into the process of killing them implementing swan control activities.
"Lethal control methods will include shooting of free-ranging swans and live capture and euthanasia in accordance with established guidelines for wildlife. Consideration will be given to donating meat (or any other part of birds killed) to charitable organizations (e.g., food pantries) or scientific, educational or zoological institutions."
The current mute swan population clocks in at around 2,200 statewide. Swan has not historically appeared on menus because it was, at one time, reserved specifically for royalty, and moreover, were a protected bird in the United Kingdom. How times change.
The Department of Environmental Conservation will accept comments on the plan until February 21.
