80-year-old woman faces charges
for feeding birds
December 8th, 2011
An 80-year-old woman in Lynn, Massachusetts, faces charges after she fed the birds at her local pond.
Town officials have filed criminal charges against Claire Butcher after she repeatedly violated a local ordinance that prohibits feeding the birds.
But Butcher couldn’t seem to stay away from her winged friends and has been charged with violating a 2009 No Tresspass Order that prohibited her from visiting local parks.
In the years since the order went into effect, police said they continued to receive complaints about Butcher, who allegedly took entire shopping carts filled with food to feed the feathered creatures.
Butcher, however, insisted she merely wanted to save six domesticated ducks from starving and wasn’t feeding hordes of wild birds. “Being an animal lover, I couldn’t leave any animals to starve to death,” Butcher told ABCNews.com.
Officials for the city of Lynn, however, are fed up with what they said was a pattern for Butcher and pressed charges against the octogenarian that could result in jail time.
“Well, look at it this way,” Butcher said, laughing. ”I will be the first 80-year-old woman in the world who was thrown in jail for feeding the animals.”
Christopher Kelly of the Lynn Police Department said Butcher had plenty of opportunities to stop before she was charged with violating the No Tresspass Order. “It’s been an ongoing issue,” Kelly told ABCNews.com. ”She’s been warned before.”
Kelly said that the health department had become concerned about community health and safety because of the increase in bird feces in the park that it linked to Butcher’s actions.
Butcher, however, sees it differently. “I have been feeding [the animals] since 1966. I’m 80 years old, and I have no health problems,” said Butcher. “To me, that’s just a lousy excuse.”
In spite of her age and the charges, Butcher remains defiant. While she said a local animal shelter took in three of the domesticated ducks, she said that with winter coming she might be tempted to feed the animals again “in a moment of weakness.
“The animals at the pond do not belong to the city of Lynn. They belong to God,” said Butcher. “If they have an issue, they should take it up with God.”
Source
An 80-year-old woman in Lynn, Massachusetts, faces charges after she fed the birds at her local pond.
Town officials have filed criminal charges against Claire Butcher after she repeatedly violated a local ordinance that prohibits feeding the birds.
But Butcher couldn’t seem to stay away from her winged friends and has been charged with violating a 2009 No Tresspass Order that prohibited her from visiting local parks.
In the years since the order went into effect, police said they continued to receive complaints about Butcher, who allegedly took entire shopping carts filled with food to feed the feathered creatures.
Butcher, however, insisted she merely wanted to save six domesticated ducks from starving and wasn’t feeding hordes of wild birds. “Being an animal lover, I couldn’t leave any animals to starve to death,” Butcher told ABCNews.com.
Officials for the city of Lynn, however, are fed up with what they said was a pattern for Butcher and pressed charges against the octogenarian that could result in jail time.
“Well, look at it this way,” Butcher said, laughing. ”I will be the first 80-year-old woman in the world who was thrown in jail for feeding the animals.”
Christopher Kelly of the Lynn Police Department said Butcher had plenty of opportunities to stop before she was charged with violating the No Tresspass Order. “It’s been an ongoing issue,” Kelly told ABCNews.com. ”She’s been warned before.”
Kelly said that the health department had become concerned about community health and safety because of the increase in bird feces in the park that it linked to Butcher’s actions.
Butcher, however, sees it differently. “I have been feeding [the animals] since 1966. I’m 80 years old, and I have no health problems,” said Butcher. “To me, that’s just a lousy excuse.”
In spite of her age and the charges, Butcher remains defiant. While she said a local animal shelter took in three of the domesticated ducks, she said that with winter coming she might be tempted to feed the animals again “in a moment of weakness.
“The animals at the pond do not belong to the city of Lynn. They belong to God,” said Butcher. “If they have an issue, they should take it up with God.”
Source
Open letter
to the City of Lynn
by Ed Abdool
Dear Lynn City Councillors,
Your treatment of Lynn resident Claire Butcher is deeply disturbing.
At a time when care and compassion like hers is fast-dying, your Council seems determined to ensure that these rare qualities are now punishable by an increasingly unjust justice system.
Need I remind you that at times of crises, it is the care and compassion like that of Ms Butcher that we as a society depend on to get by?
You may hold positions of power but please be humbled by acts of kindness when you witness them. You may not have it in your own personalities to exercise such kindness to non-human life but please do not interfere with others whose only crime is to have a deep respect for all life - it only makes your Council appear arrogant and intolerant.
Your discriminatory views of these birds are not shared by everyone. In fact, the tolerant among us are capable of seeing that all life has equal rights to the planet, whether or not these rights are written into our feeble laws. Ms Butcher is doing a truly wonderful thing by helping to address the fact that we have taken away many of the natural habitats from these and other species.
As news of your bullying tactics makes its way around the world, I want you to know this: The world now knows that the City of Lynn is being run by authoritarian dictators who clearly do not have enough real problems to attend to.
I am pleased to read that Ms Butcher finds your efforts deeply pathetic and mildly amusing and I hope that many others will now defy your draconian laws that prevent them from helping other forms of sentient life in the City of Lynn.
If you like to voice your opinion to the City of Lynn, please use their contact form http://www.ci.lynn.ma.us/contactcityhall.shtml or email this lady and ask her to distribute your mail to all City Councillors: [email protected]
Answer received from the City of Lynn
From: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Claire Butcher
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:40:06 +0000
Mr. Abdool,
what seems to be an injustice on the surface or just whose actions are truly harmful is not easy to see and difficult at best with the issue of bulk feeding by Ms. Butcher. As the Liaison between the Department of Environmental Protection and the Natural Heritage, Fish and Wildlife Program, I can assure you my views are not one-sided with the interests of all in mind.
It has become clichéd for some folks to use the argument that we (humans) are taking away habitat for another species and in certain arguments, it is true. However, Flax Pond is a pond surrounded by homes that have been there for well over one-hundred years.
Historically, at Flax Pond there have been swans, geese and ducks populating areas around the pond. It has only been in the last 10-20 years and even more recently, that the Canada Geese population has exploded, where there are at times, hundreds of them in small areas congregating around the pond. These exploding numbers of geese have strained the ability of the area to sustain them or allow them to co-exist in a healthy manner with others. When Canada Geese are artificially fed with dog food, bird seed and bread in bulk quantities, such as carriages full of 50 lb. bags of food, it is extreme and actually harmful to the fowl being fed. Over time a bird’s clutches begin to see greater numbers and the population increases very quickly to where it crowds out other species and the area can no longer sustain them. The bulk feedings also cause the birds to lose the ability to forage and instead rely on the artificial feedings during winter periods.
It is in the best interest of all for Ms. Butcher to discontinue the bulk feedings and the City’s Health Department recognizes this and has requested Ms. Butcher to cease and desist, otherwise she leaves the city with no choice other than to charge her with trespassing.
Thanks for contacting us with your concerns, we can all agree we would like to see a balanced and fair environment without abuse in any form. Wayne Lozzi, Councilor Ward One
and the response to this mail
Sent: Wednesday, 21 December 2011 8:38 p.m.
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: RE: Claire Butcher
Dear Wayne,
Thanks for the prompt reply which you failed to send to me directly - thankfully it was recently forwarded to me by a third party.
First, I notice your repeated highlight (no less than on four separate occasions) of the word “bulk” in your description of the quantity of food being used by Claire for the birds at Flax Pond and I presume that this is your greatest concern over the matter. For the quantity of birds that you have described with terms such as “population explosion” and “unsustainable populations,” it seems to me highly unlikely that (when measured on a per-bird basis), 50kg of food constitutes bulk feeding (I am guessing that, at worse –that this happens on a daily basis at its most frequent). You claim that your views are in no way biased and based on this claim, I would trust that you have some reliable population figures for the Flax Pond birds that demonstrates this “exploding population” over the past 20 years. If so, I shall be most grateful to receive a copy of these.
If the quantity of feed in question is what you perceive to be the greatest threat, then surely the solution to the problem is to work out what you believe to be an acceptable quantity satisfying your perceived concerns and then meet with Claire to discuss why it is in everyone’s interest (including the birds) for her to reduce the food quantity to that amount. At the end of the day Wayne, I am sure that we can all agree that Claire Butcher is not a bad woman deserving of criminal charges- not at all. She merely wishes to know that the birds are not suffering unduly. In a world where corporate structures are crumbling from a dominance of greed, surely we can agree that there is incredible virtue in this? Indeed you will find that in the UK, the Royal Society for Protection of Birds in the UK actively encourage the feeding of wild birds (http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/helpingbirds/feeding/whentofeed.aspx) especially during Autumn and Winter where Claire (quite rightfully so) is most concerned about the food availability in the wild. I mean no offence to you Wayne but if the past is anything to go by ethics and welfare in the treatment of animals does not seem to be high on the agendas of the Department of Environmental Protection and the Natural Heritage, Fish and Wildlife Program. But you will no doubt be aware that times are changing- compassionate people are becoming more aware of what has been happening behind doors that were once closed to public scrutiny and they are speaking out against these injustices. The “Occupy” protests only bear testimony to the fact that Constituents not only expect but also demand fairness from the public servants who have been either elected or appointed to represent them.
Further, as the Liaison between the Department of Environmental Protection and the Natural Heritage, Fish and Wildlife Program, presumably you too will know that food resources is only one of factors that limit populations in the wild. Whether or not Claire feeds these birds the population will reach its plateau once space becomes a limiting factor- I note that your arguments failed to acknowledge the limiting factors other than food availability. Can you please indicate what forms of non-lethal control (for example egg-pricking) your council have already investigated to control this perceived “exploding” population of birds?
Based on what you have written below, and as someone with a Masters with Distinction in Conservation Biology (specialising in controlling wild populations), I am not at all convinced that your views are unbiased or thoroughly thought out and I hasten to add that I mean no disrespect in saying this. You argue that Claire’s feeding will cause the birds to lose their foraging abilities and I wonder if there is any material in the scientific literature from which you draw this conclusion. If so, I shall be most grateful to receive a copy via email. Of course we both know that it is not I or anyone else that need to be convinced on this matter. If you can convince Claire with irrefutable proof (rather than going on a weak habitual belief system that is largely unscientifically unfounded) that feeding the birds is actually harming them, then please do so and you will find that as an exceedingly intelligent and reasonable lady, she will gladly oblige without the City of Lynn having to resort to highly inappropriate and unprofessional threats of criminal charges.
Most if not all animals (of which I include us humans) know when to take advantage of a treat when it comes their way but under no circumstances do they lose their ability to forage when the need arises. After Claire is gone for the day, rest assured that these birds spend most -if not all- their remaining time honing their foraging skills. Again however I maintain, if you have some scientific literature to back up your claim regarding the loss of foraging ability, please do send it on. Incidentally, with the human population now a burgeoning 7 billion, I wonder if our focus should be on limiting the resources of our own race. Surely for the sake of protecting the environment we (and I include the DEP in this) could focus less on the birds at Flax Pond and focus more on preventing the planet from being decimated by an ever-growing human population which undeniably poses a far more menacing threat to the planet’s resources and indeed the very existence of the human race. In America whenever food becomes limiting, we boldly look to under-developed nations and effectively steal their own scarce resources to feed a largely obese population. Surely we must look at how we as humans are feeding ourselves and growing in numbers before we can start judging the alleged growth other species.
Wayne, I do not expect you to adopt a lifestyle of kindness to all life around you but please do understand that just as you would do anything to help your own offspring (or other loved humans in your own life), there are some very special people among us like Claire Butcher whose acts of kindness do not discriminate on the basis of species –such people feel the same toward all sentient life forms as most humans feel toward their own kind. But need I remind you that you hold your position as a public servant to serve all those in your constituency and this includes those who hold differing views to your own. Yes, you do have the authority and power at present to charge Claire as though she were a criminal (and quite worryingly, you say this is your ONLY option) but I hold out some hope that you or someone else in your Council will see that this is undeniably the worse possible way to deal with the matter. Get someone caring and with a suitably high degree of compassion to do down and meet with her as a friend, rather than a threatening Public Servant wishing to exercise his/ her authority over her). Chat to her not only note her welfare concerns for these birds for the sake of some silly Council report but to take into account these concerns together with your own when drawing up a mutual agreement for going forward. Provide her with well-documented evidence and take tedious steps to ensure that she understands and you will find that you no longer have a perceived problem. Indeed the process may also help to highlight areas where your own knowledge is lacking or where your own beliefs are supported by nothing other than thin air. Contrary to what you wrote, you DO NOT have only one option here: the worse option however (both for Claire and for your public perception) that you can adopt is exercising brute force which directly causes an 80 year old woman to be thrown into prison where given her age and fragility, she may very well end up spending her last days. As a start, I can recommend the services of the non-profit organisation PiCAS International (http://www.picasuk.com/) whose experience and tact in dealing with persistent feeders may prove to be of immense benefit to your Council.
To all City of Lynn staff, here’s wishing you a fantastic holiday period.
Best Regards,
Ed Abdool