A hired trapper killed ‘aggressive’ ducks at a Miami-area park. Then came the outrage

A complaint about an “aggressive” duck led officials in a small town to quietly hire a trapper to kill the birds in a local park. That decision escalated into resident outrage, a candlelight vigil for the slain waterfowl and the firing of a business executive who posted a photo of Hitler to criticize city officials.

Some residents said the ducks were harmless and pointed to the geese in the park as the likely culprits.

Across South Florida, management of Muscovy ducks — which are invasive to the state — is an ongoing problem. But the decision by Palmetto Bay officials to kill the birds without public input has stoked anger.

“I remember growing up with these ducks at the park. They’re a part of our village,” Palmetto Bay resident Mark Merwitzer said. “They weren’t doing anything. They were just being ducks.”

Several residents, including Merwitzer, attended a candlelight vigil for the slain ducks earlier this month.

Video from Miami Herald partner CBS News Miami shows nearly two dozen people chanting “save our ducks” and holding signs that say “I was supposed to be protected” with an image of a bird below.

‘Rogue ducks’

It started with an email.

“I need some guidance,” Beth Person, vice president of programs for the Coral Reef Elementary School PTA wrote on Feb. 15 to Palmetto Bay Mayor Karyn Cunningham and Parks and Recreation Director Fanny Carmona.

“We have some rogue ducks that are on our campus, most specifically int [sic] courtyard of our entrance/cafeteria. One in particular is aggressive. Who can I ask to remove them?” she asked.

Person added that she had been told that a girl hit her head while running from one of the ducks. The email did not include additional details about the incident. The elementary school is adjacent to Coral Reef Park.

The village hired a trapper within days of Person’s message.

Duck, duck, goose

Some park-goers said they generally are more concerned about the Egyptian Geese — another invasive species that occupies Coral Reef Park and is known for being aggressive toward humans. Several said the ducks are tame in comparison.

“They’re just annoying,” Palmetto Bay resident Judy Carlson said, referring to the Muscovy ducks, “because when you sit down, you know, you have to keep reminding them that this is your space. But they’re not aggressive.”

Resident Tone Calle said the bird that chased the girl at the elementary school sounds more like an Egyptian Goose.

“I would think that that was probably the culprit,” Calle said during a recent stroll through Coral Reef Park. “Muscovies are friendly. Muscovies don’t get in anyone’s way that I’ve ever noticed. But Egyptian Geese, they’re definitely a whole different ball game.”

In the early spring, some residents began to notice what appeared to be a decrease in the duck population in Coral Reef Park. Merwitzer, as well as David Singer, who was on the Palmetto Bay Village Council from 2016 to 2020, began filing public records requests.

In response, the village provided invoices from Jason Pijuan of Invasive Wildlife Removal Miami, LLC.

One invoice dated Feb. 24 stated eight ducks were removed at $45 each for a subtotal of $360 and “1 aggressive male” was removed at no charge. A second invoice from March 1 said 12 ducks were removed for a total of $540. Combined, the two invoices amount to $900.

The village has previously removed Egyptian Geese from the park. Invoices from 2010 to 2015 show that the village has on at least seven occasions hired trappers to remove geese. Another invoice is dated July 2021.

But the Muscovies aren’t totally innocent. A parks employee who declined to give his name said the ducks at Coral Reef Park are most definitely aggressive, especially during mating season or when they’ve learned to rely on humans for food.

The ducks can also spread disease and disrupt habitats by competing with native species for resources, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

‘That doesn’t seem quite humane’

Muscovy ducks were first introduced to Florida in the mid-1960s, according to the University of Florida. They are native to South America and Central America and have migrated to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

While Muscovies are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the United States Fish and Wildlife service has issued a control order for the species, which stipulates that landowners can kill them on their property without a permit, except in Alaska, Hawaii and three counties in Texas.

Village Manager Nick Marano and Mayor Cunningham said they do not know the contractor’s methods for trapping and killing the ducks in Coral Reef Park. Pijuan did not respond to requests from the Herald seeking that information.

Marano promised that the trapper’s methods were above board. While the use of a rifle is allowed to kill Muscovies, Marano said that the trapper at Coral Reef Park “did not shoot ducks with a rifle.”

Last week, Merwitzer received another round of records from the village. The recent batch included emails from the trapper with graphic photos that show the dead ducks lined up in a row on the park walkway and on the grass.

“When I opened up those pictures, I was sick for a second,” Merwitzer said. “That was nasty. Terrible. That did not look humane. There’s a picture there of a duck bloodied up and there’s blood on the torso. That hit, and it hit really hard.”

Village Councilmember Steve Cody said, based on the photos, it appears that the ducks’ necks were broken — a method that has been considered to be humane because it is believed to incapacitate the birds quickly.

According to Florida Fish & Wildlife, the killing of nuisance wildlife must be done in a manner that is humane as defined by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Under the AVMA guidelines, several methods are “acceptable with conditions,” including neck-breaking, also known as “cervical dislocation.”

Those guidelines state that cervical dislocation “appears to be humane” when performed by “well-trained individuals on appropriate animals,” but that “there are few scientific studies available to confirm this observation.”

The U.S. control order also states that Muscovy ducks cannot be released to a new location.

“It’s not pretty,” Cody said. “But unfortunately under federal law and state law, when you have an aggressive animal in your parks, you can’t relocate them.”

Mayor Cunningham questioned if the state’s rules are sufficient, saying, “that doesn’t seem quite humane, the way that these animals are destroyed or removed.”

The school incident

Calle said he wants to trust that the village leadership is doing the right thing.

“I don’t think that we need to be involved in every minutiae decision that they make,” he said. “But I feel strongly that, before you decide to take the life of an animal, that you make sure that you’ve done your research and you follow the right protocol.”

Some residents have questioned the veracity of the original PTA email, which was the genesis of the duck removal, because there was very little detail about the incident with the child.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokeswoman Jaquelyn Calzadilla Diaz confirmed to the Miami Herald that a pre-K student sustained injuries on Feb. 10.

“She was being chased by a duck after school and while running away, she slipped and fell, hitting her head on a picnic table causing a laceration that needed stitches,” Calzadilla Diaz said in an email. There is a history of ducks waddling onto the school’s campus and “being very aggressive with students and staff,” she added.

“The ducks would follow anyone walking by the courtyard that leads into the cafeteria and peck at their legs,” Calzadilla Diaz said. “On a daily basis, the school’s custodians would guide the ducks out of the school, but they would fly back.”

Cody said that once officials learned about the incident at Coral Reef Elementary School, they needed to take action. “I’m not going to apologize for our village taking steps to protect residents, even if it’s going to upset some people,” he said.

A spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said the village could have taken other preventive measures, like removing artificial food sources and using repellents, fencing and “other humane strategies” before resorting to euthanizing.

“If officials had done their research, instead of being so eager to snuff out these birds’ lives, they would have found that the only effective, permanent way to keep waterfowl away from an area is to make the habitat unattractive or inaccessible to them,” said PETA spokeswoman Catie Cryar. “Killing these ducks, who were there through no fault of their own, was cruel and irresponsible.”

A ‘political football’ and rivalry

Singer, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the duck killings, was on the Village Council for four years. In 2020, Cody unseated him by fewer than 500 votes. Singer subsequently sued Cody for $1 million in 2021, accusing Cody of attempted extortion. The case is still open.

Their rivalry has been an undercurrent of the tensions over the waterfowl killings.

Singer had been rallying against the duck removal on Facebook, where he runs an account called “What’s Happening in Palmetto Bay.” The social media posts reached a crescendo earlier this month when Singer, who is Jewish, posted a now-deleted photo of Adolf Hitler to the Facebook page.

“I heard today that Mayor Karyn Cunningham, Vice Mayor Leanne Tellum and Village Manager Nick Marano were looking for a final solution to the ducks in the Village of Palmetto Bay,” Singer wrote in the caption. “You know who else was looking for a final solution?”

Cody, who called the duck removal issue a “political football,” said he sent the post to Singer’s employer, retail developer Berkowitz Development Group.

Last week, Singer said, he was fired from the firm, where he had worked since 1998. His positions included chief financial officer and chief operating officer, according to the company website.

“Due to my activism, I was terminated, and at this present time I have no further comment,” Singer told the Herald. He added that family members on his paternal side died in the Holocaust, and that he was not making light of it, but rather criticizing terminology he said village officials had used to describe the duck removal.

Berkowitz Development Group founder Jeff Berkowitz told the Herald he was unable to comment on personnel matters.

Private trappers

Some residents say that the Muscovy population in Coral Reef Park has decreased significantly in recent months.

Marano said residents may be conflating the trapper hired by the village with private trappers hired by residents.

On March 29, police responded to an incident at Saga Lake in neighboring Cutler Bay where a man reported confronting a group of three men who were using a hammock to try to collect ducks from the lake, according to an incident report filed with the Miami-Dade Police Department.

According to the incident report, the confrontation escalated until one man revealed a pistol beneath his shirt and threatened to shoot the other.

Police said they were able to connect that incident to one that occurred nearly a month prior in Palmetto Bay.

On March 1 at Coral Reef Park, a man confronted another man who was catching ducks, and the trapper reportedly said “that he would kill him and the ducks,” according to the Miami-Dade Police incident report. The village issued him a citation.

Going forward, Marano said the village can take more preventive measures to control the Muscovy population, such as removing eggs before they hatch, and potentially passing an ordinance to stop people from feeding the ducks.

Cody said the village plans to hold a meeting to discuss invasive wildlife in May.

Cunningham proposed creating a wildlife management plan with other South Miami-Dade cities, where there is significant green space.

“I think the city needs to do a little more research in coming up with a plan that best fits the needs of Palmetto Bay,” she said. “There’s gotta be ways that we could be doing this differently.”

Miami Herald reporter Sommer Brugal contributed reporting.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that former councilmember David Singer is a lawyer.