On a recent morning in Staten Island’s Willowbrook Park, she waved some bread to lure a goose that had a plastic six-pack ring wrapped tightly around its neck. Nearby stood two New York City parks rangers and a group of animal rescuers who had already collected five white ducks into pens.
Moments later, there was a flash of stomping and quacking, as John Di Leonardo, executive director of the Long Island Orchestrating for Nature animal advocacy group, known as LION, sprinted after a brown duck with a broken wing. At the edge of the lake, Di Leonardo dove, arms outstretched, like a receiver flying into the end zone, and somehow grabbed the female mallard. “We rescue ducks like this all the time,” said Di Leonardo, panting.
“Yes, but have you saved 3,000?” said Caroline Lee, of Douglaston, New York, a retiree who is considered the godmother of duck rescue in New York City. She said she has taken so many to upstate sanctuaries that she stopped counting.
The birds in the pens — they were white Pekin ducks, raised for meat, and unable to fly — had been illegally dumped at the park a few days earlier.
The rescuers were dreading Easter season, when the number of domesticated ducks dumped in city parks increases. People give ducks as novelty Easter gifts, they said, and this time of year they are used in school hatching projects.
“Once those cute little ducklings grow up to be nonstop pooping machines who are a lot of work to care for, people dump them at their local pond, possibly not realizing they are not equipped to live on their own,” Lee said.
During the past five months, the city parks department has allowed these duck rescues. Abandoned domestic animals in the parks is “not a good thing for the park or the animals,” said Sarah Aucoin, chief of education and wildlife for the city Department of Parks and Recreation. But a new rule amendment, proposed by the city and meant to protect the animals, could get in the way of rescue efforts.
The Willowbrook rescue took place after a Staten Island woman contacted Di Leonardo’s organization when she noticed the Pekin ducks. She had learned about Di Leonardo a few weeks earlier, when she had come upon a different group of rescuers (who were not part of LION) and grew increasingly irate that they were capturing ducks.
“I found it shady,” said the woman, Edie DelVecchio, a retired government bond broker. She reported the rescuers to the park rangers. “I said, ‘This is New York City, you don’t take animals.’ ” The park rangers made the rescuers return the ducks to the pond. “We’re here all day long,” DelVecchio said. “We know what’s going on.”
Eventually, Di Leonardo explained LION’s mission to DelVecchio and gained her trust. The ducks that were rescued at Willowbrook were taken to JuneBug Lodge, a vegan bed-and-breakfast in the Finger Lakes region of New York. DelVecchio was able to see pictures of the ducks in the country.
The law is clear on keeping ducks as pets in New York City: It is illegal. Beyond that, Di Leonardo added, “It’s a criminal offense to abandon them — they can’t fly.”
But rescuers now have a new concern. Capturing ducks is legal, but the current rule on feeding wildlife in the parks (which makes an exception to allow feeding of squirrels and birds) may change. The Parks Department wants to ban feeding all animals, with some exceptions, and with a $50 fine and summons for violators.
This could affect rescuers, who sometimes feed fowl in order to capture them. The park’s interest in enforcing the new feeding ban, which is not yet on the books, seems to have intensified since the arrival in November of the celebrity Mandarin duck, who gets a lot of bread thrown at him from his adoring fans.
Many duck rescuers said they are concerned that the rule change will inhibit their work. But Aucoin said that’s not the plan, and exceptions will be made public. “Our intention is not to limit legitimate groups that want to rescue animals,” she said. “We ask that they coordinate with us.”
The rule change was originally proposed to curb the booming rat population, according to the Parks Department, but also to protect wild animals from human food, which can make them sick.
Wild animals fed by humans can become aggressive, Aucoin said. In 2017, there were a number of squirrel attacks in Prospect Park, and a raccoon bit a woman who was trying to feed it in Central Park.
Zafonte agrees with the feeding ban, she said, as long as it doesn’t curtail rescue efforts. But so far, she said that she has experienced a bit of tension with park rangers, some of whom are enforcing the feeding ban before it’s enacted, which can get in the way of her daily routine.
Every morning and afternoon, Zafonte, who lives and works near Central Park, heads to one of its well-known locations, “the Pond,” near Fifth Avenue and 60th Street to feed two large domestic Khaki Campbell ducks, that live there. They were raised for laying eggs, and neither can fly.
“Everyone knows a dog can’t survive in the wild, but they think it’s different when it comes to ducks,” Zafonte said from inside Central Park. “Basically, it’s a death sentence.”
As Zafonte spoke, her eyes widened. Some tourists had climbed onto the rocks near the water and started throwing food at the ducks.
“See! She’s throwing pretzels!” Zafonte said. “That’s the worst! People are lunatics.”