NEW YORK — The State of New York plans to "gas" or otherwise kill 170,000 Canada geese to reduce the number from 250,000 to 85,000.

This news item, tucked away in The New York Times, struck me as yet another sign of human willfulness toward flora and fauna. After all, when it appeared, the BP oil spill off the coast of Louisiana had only recently been stopped, and images of oil-soaked pelicans and those cleaned and released, were still fresh. Efforts to save oil-damaged pelicans and others were made despite the warning that the survival rate of animals so "rescued" is a mere 1 percent. Why then plan mass killings of another species of bird?

Brown pelicans are common south of Virginia, I learned when my wife and I started spending summers on the Carolina shore three decades ago, but the first time I saw one remains as my first taste of "wilderness." In the summer of 1965, a friend took me out on a fishing boat overnight off the coast of Redondo Beach, Calif., perhaps near Santa Catalina Island. Against the crags rising out of the choppy dark blue sea flew a solitary pelican. Right then it ceased to be the odd creature confined to zoos I had known.