MY BROTHER’S NIGERIAN FATHER-IN-LAW is always looking at the flocks of Canada Geese on the lake behind their house and wondering why Americans just let them hang around and don’t eat them, especially as they’re pests. Now we’re seeing a changed attitude: New York: Culled Geese Are Bound For Tables, Not Dump.

This year, at least, the city’s slaughtered geese will not go to waste: They will go to feed hungry Pennsylvanians.

Last summer, much of the outcry prompted by the roundup of hundreds of geese in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, in the name of airline safety focused on the fact that after the geese were gassed, their bodies were dumped in a landfill, leaving literally tons of tasty, high-protein free-range meat (an adult goose can weigh 25 pounds) to rot in garbage heaps. The authorities said the state had not established safety protocols for processing and consumption of wild goose meat.

In response to the criticism, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection has arranged to truck this year’s captured geese to Pennsylvania, where they will be slaughtered and then distributed to food banks there.

I like the idea of eating invasive or annoying species instead of just killing them. That, of course, is the point of the Locavore Hunter blog, whose proprieter, Jack Landers, is declaring victory. Now if we can just see them opened to regular hunting until their numbers drop. . . .

UPDATE: Oregon takes a less progressive approach. For shame. What have they got against hungry poor people?