Dear Mayor and Council Members,
To quote the carol: “Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please to put a penny in an old man’s hat. If you have no penny. . .” why not spend $200,000 you don’t have?
In the alternative, we urge you to take action to curb waterfowl populations and feeding in Rapid City’s Parks. The council has received consistent, expert advice from resource managers at local, state and federal levels: feeding wild waterfowl is not beneficial. You can’t control the populations of geese and ducks if you won’t stop the practice of feeding them.
The council has backed away from a feeding ban, citing tradition as the rationale. Traditions are important, but when they are no longer beneficial — and are in fact harmful — they should be replaced with new traditions. Feeding wildlife has never been a good activity. Allowing — even encouraging — feeding demonstrates poor leadership on the part of the city as stewards and managers of our public resources. A better course of action would include education about the harm caused by feeding, providing metered binoculars for wildlife watching from afar, erecting signs explaining the kinds of birds and waterfowl we have, or any of a host of other activities that are already available from outdoor educators and organizations such as Project WILD, Ducks Unlimited, Audubon and others.
To burden the Parks Department, already stretched to the limit performing basic care and maintenance of our parks, with this clean-up duty and a capital expenditure for unbudgeted equipment is irrational. It is particularly imprudent when the council has repeatedly refused to appropriate funding for already needed additional park staff. Park officials point out that even with the equipment, cleaning up after the birds is a Herculean task. As long as the public is allowed to lure ducks and geese out of the water to gobble inappropriate food and make the resultant deposits on the sidewalk, the pollution of our parks and waters will increase.
Please do what is right. Educate the public. Ban feeding. Control the population. If you control the feeding and find that the equipment and additional park personnel are still needed, consider the costs in the normal course of budgeting.
Sincerely,
Suzanne I. Martley
Executive Director