Cuomo Once Again Vetoes Bill To Protect Sheepshead Bay’s Swans

For the second year in a row, Governor Andrew Cuomo has vetoed a bill that would have blocked plans to reduce the New York’s population of mute swans, the snow white birds that have become a staple presence in Sheepshead Bay.

“Obviously this isn’t the outcome we were hoping for, especially after the bill passed both houses overwhelmingly two years in a row and so many advocates fought hard on the legislation’s behalf,” said Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, who introduced the legislation in the Assembly.

The bill called for a moratorium on the Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) plan to cull the swans. The agency ignited a controversy two years ago when it declared mute swans, which were brought to North America from Europe in the 1800s, an invasive species and sought to completely eradicate them.

An outpouring of public comments in support of preserving the swans caused the agency to amend its plans. Kings County Politics reports the agency plans to release further revisions by the end of the year. Instead of killing the birds in Sheepshead Bay and other areas of Brooklyn, the population would be controlled by oiling the the eggs so that they can’t hatch.

However, an unidentified source told the news site that Brooklyn’s mute swans could still be killed “as a last resort to alleviate a site-specific conflict.”

Cuomo said he decided to once again veto the legislature’s bill because it overlapped with the DEC’s revised plan, according to a press release from Cymbrowitz’s office. Earlier this year, Cymbrowitz blasted the new proposal, which would reduce the swan population by two-thirds, because it shifted financial responsibility for managing the birds’ numbers to cash-strapped communities.

At the heart of the controversy over the future of New York’s mute swans is whether the birds are a hazard to the environment and native species. The DEC argues the swans displace native birds and occasionally attack “ducklings, goslings or other small water birds.” The birds also gobble up aquatic vegetation that provides food and shelter to fish other aquatic animals.

However, opponents of the DEC’s plans say the agency has not produced convincing evidence that the swans pose a threat to the environment.

David Karopkin, the founder of GooseWatch NYC, an animal rights group that opposes the plan, told the New York Times “it impossible to really assess what the D.E.C. is accusing the mute swans of, because they haven’t provided any specific data, just these very broad, speculative accusations that may or may not be true,”

Senator Tony Avella, who introduced the bill in the Senate, agreed that the DEC’s evidence was insufficient.

“Scientific data does not back the decision to exterminate the mute swan. I stand with the activists, and the public, in saying that we do not want the mute swan harmed,” he said in a statement.