Evening Press Reader's Letter

I applaud the City of York Council's decision to deal radically with the unwanted goose population in Rowntree Park.

It seems that the English obsession with all things animal transcends national thinking when the threat of abuse of animal rights is mentioned.

The institution of the parks, chiefly by the Victorian visionaries was designed as a safe, relaxing environ where families could spend leisure time in comparative comfort.

Unfortunate then, that the consensus seems to be that human recreation comes a very poor second to the provision of a wilderness where only wild animals have sanctuary.

York needs green areas which are free of animal excrement, where one could take children to play and picnic - Rowntree Park is not such a place.

Geese are noisy, dirty and often aggressive, and have no place in a civilised environment.

S K Hyde,

Chestnut Avenue,

Stockton Lane,

York.

...REGARDING the controversy of the geese, I understand that a licence is to be sought enabling them to be relocated, prior to any official culling. (Evening Press, December 10).

The sight and sound of the geese in flight is a breathtaking wonder of nature; they are beautiful creatures, and surely with a little planning and some minor expenditure (someone to clean up unwanted mess, which can be recycled as manure; after all we employ people readily to clean up human litter), their destruction is surely both avoidable and unnecessary.

The geese have regularly flown across our neighbourhood over the last few months, at the same times of day. Since December 7, three days before the published statement of intent, we have neither seen nor heard them. Has a license been applied for? Have they been relocated, or have they met a secret, more sinister fate? Can anyone throw any light on the geese's whereabouts?

Wendy Hull,

Montague Street,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.