Pain Rays, Plane Crashes, and Gas Chambers.

So the other day I was commenting on a story in the online edition of Wired Magazine about a Reported US Air Force plan to use 40 million dollar pain beam generators to move geese off of runways. This is the machine that they would not send to Iraq or Afghanistan because it would not be humane to use for crowd control.
I made the point that it would cost millions of tax dollars to purchase, man, and maintain each of these pain rays every year and that it's much cheaper to spend the $30,000 a year to hire a Border Collie Service like mine to do the job.
I also pointed out that it's a felony in most places to intentionally inflict pain on an animal.
I was jumped on by a guy because he could not believe someone would charge that much to run their dog on a runway a few times a week. After all, he only pays someone $15 a day to walk his dog. My job is considerably more complex than he realizes. Yes, $30k sounds like a bit much, but that is actually someone on site almost every day and on-call service. It worked out to be about $25 an hour before taxes and expenses.
Ok, so let's get the basic stuff out of the way. Despite the media blitzkrieg surrounding the "Miracle on the Hudson" incident, planes are not constantly dropping out of the air because they are hitting geese. Most bird strikes are seagulls, not geese. Most bird strikes happen at small general aviation airports. They are hit by small prop planes and helicopters. Almost every rare injury is minor.
I read the FAA's recent bird report and in the 18-year time frame it covers - 1990 to 2007 - there was 1 aircraft struck by Canada geese that resulted in 2 human deaths. Just to put that in perspective, in that same time frame there was one incident with one human death cause when a plane hit a HORSE. Yes, you heard that correctly, a HORSE! (Source FAA Bird Strike Report page 54 table 15.)
Are they going to construct a giant horse zapper?
The FAA report actually blames part of the problem on airlines replacing their older 4-engine planes with quieter 2-engine planes.
It seems as if groups like the USDA's Wildlife Management Services Division are using the Hudson crash to justify their jobs. USDA Wildlife Management kills thousands of wild animals each year, including several protected species. They herd geese into gas chambers when they are flightless. According to a USDA source, Congress has been asked to make this information exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Last summer, the agency justified the killings by saying goose droppings can cause disease, but this year all they can say is Hudson plane crash. They even used this excuse to explain why they were killing geese on a NY golf course that was several miles from JFK.
Now this is where it gets strange. They used the Hudson crash to justify killing non-migratory geese in June, but the plane hit migratory geese in February. These are effectively two different types of geese. It's like killing the cow because the bull kicked you.
The real kicker is that their lethal program does not work. Say you have a park and you have the USDA show up in mid-June to kill 100 geese there. You may think your problem is solved, and it is till late July when this year's goslings from nearby properties start flying. For example, one of my customers who had no geese all summer had 52 young geese show up last week. In a week I have trained them that when they see my silver pickup, they need to leave. I did not even get to stop the truck tonight before they left the property. If they had hired the USDA, they would have been goose free for 4 to 6 weeks.
If you want to actually solve the problem of geese near airports, you need to change the environment that is attracting them. Adding a perceived predatory presence, like a border collie, actually does that. Pain Rays and gas chambers are not humane, not cost effective, and they do not work.