Opinion
On Wednesday, June 8, David Wallner, chair of the Madison Parks Commission, presented Vice Chair Madelyn Leopold with a little stuffed toy duck for running a “difficult” May meeting when the commission voted to kill geese in Madison parks. The presentation brought chuckles. It might charitably be called gallows humor.
The decision to kill geese in our public parks this year was one of the most divisive issues in recent city history. Originally approved in April 2010, a public outcry forced a reversal and a year-long public process and study of alternate ideas. More than half of all public commentators were against geese kills.
Ms. Leopold, in her debut chairing a parks meeting, did an admirable job. Testimony was heated, emotional and overwhelmingly against killing geese. We applaud her even-handed leadership.
But the toy duck reward for her work was inappropriate and an insult to the effort of citizens who tried to save the birds. The killing of geese and goslings will start within days in Vilas Park when the geese molt and cannot fly.
Ms. Leopold’s grandfather, pioneer environmentalist Aldo Leopold, is famous for a wilderness epiphany, after “pumping lead” into a wolf pack and watching the “fierce green fire” in one wolf’s eyes fade. If he kept a stuffed replica it surely did not comfort or humor him. Long after, the dead wolf reminded him that all living things share this planet, and that killing a fellow creature carries a sober debt.
Jim Carrier, chair
Wild Warner
(An edited version of this letter to the editor was published Saturday June 11 in the Wisconsin State Journal.)
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