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June 29, 2006
Parakeet case charges dropped
Thu, 08 Dec 2005
Parakeet case charges dropped
Trying to save birds, West Haven woman had confronted UI workers
By KEN DIXON
dixon.connpost@snet.net
State prosecutors said Wednesday they will drop criminal charges against the West Haven nursing student who confronted a United Illuminating Co. crew in an attempt to save monk parakeets from eradication.
Mark Hurley, assistant state's attorney, said he and Mary M. Galvin, state's attorney for the Judicial District of Ansonia and Milford, will ask a judge next Tuesday to vacate a breach-of-peace charge that resulted from Julie Cook's arrest Nov. 30.
Hurley declined further comment. On Nov. 17, the Connecticut Post reported that UI had started an eradication campaign of euthanizing birds on a Florida model.
The issue attracted nationwide attention from bird lovers and animal-rights groups that criticized UI for killing birds, when utilities in New York and New Jersey had removed the parakeets' sometimes-large nests from utility poles without exterminating the birds.
Animal-rights advocates, whose lawsuit resulted in UI this week backing away from capturing addi-tional monk parakeets, hailed the decision not to prosecute Cook, who became irate when she saw UI crews capturing birds on Ocean Avenue and then turning them over to the U.S. Department of Agricul-ture to be killed by asphyxiation.
“I wish I had done more for the birds that are now dead,'' Cook said.
“There are so few of them left. But this is a small fight in a bigger war.''
Priscilla Feral, president of Darien-based Friends of Animals Inc., said possibly hundreds of monk parakeets may have evaded UI's eradication effort, which ended this week in state Superior Court, where Friends of Animals withdrew a lawsuit and UI agreed to stop capturing the birds through the end of the year.
Before UI's program, more than 1,200 of the birds lived in thatched-stick nests in fir trees, oak trees and utility poles in the region.
“If they had killed all the birds they intended to capture, we think one-third to one-half of Connecti-cut's population of monk parakeets would have been destroyed,'' Feral said.
A state-regulated monopoly, UI waited eight years or more before attempting to tear down 103 nests between West Haven and Fairfield, some of which weighed more than 200 pounds and housed up to 40 birds.
Laurel Lundstrom, program director for Friends of Animals, said she has received reports from resi-dents saying the birds are returning to the nests where UI had captured them.
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