Planes and birds: capital punishment protest

Save the killers? We sort of feared this might happen when the Port Authority, the which runs New York City's airports, said it would kill off some 2,000 geese that nest right next to airports. The agency acted during the animals' molting season, when the birds can't fly and so can't fly into jet aircraft engines and so bring down planes, as they did in January.
That's when a flock of geese brought down US Airways Flight 1549, and even though all on board survived, that was the result of the pilot's skill and a goodly portion of luck.
The usual suspects turned up to protest the goose-gassing outside the Port Authority's Manhattan office, prompting this surprisingly witty official response: "Our responsibility is to think about safety for people before peace for geese," Port Authority spokesman Stephen Sigmund told The New York Times. The protesters may have a point: the Humane Society says that Canada geese can be managed by non-lethal methods.