Snowy white owl shootings at JFK were done legally to protect planes, lawyer argues

The government is seeking to toss a federal lawsuit aiming to change the policy that allows the birds to be killed at the airport.

BY JOHN MARZULLI 

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Saturday, August 2, 2014

The killings of three snowy white owls at Kennedy Airport in December by Port Authority personnel were done lawfully to protect aircraft, a government lawyer argued Friday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

The government is seeking to toss a federal lawsuit aiming to change the policy.

The shootings occurred after airport officials became aware of an “eruption” of the owls in the winter of 2013, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Margaret Kolbe. 

Non-lethal means are also used to control the migratory bird population and prevent them from being sucked into a jetliner’s engine, but nearly 9,000 birds were killed at the airport in 2012 as part of the bird hazard reduction program.

The group Friends of Animals suing the feds offered an ode to the doomed owls in court papers: “Over the weekend of Dec. 7, 2013, three snowy owls alighted in the vicinity of John F. Kennedy Airport. Had these owls taken their respite near Logan International Airport in Boston they would have been humanely captured and relocated. Instead as the New York Daily News reported to the shock and horror of millions of New Yorkers, "they were shot on sight.”