The results of necropsies on the three hawks that died (two in Central Park and one right outside the park) are in. Toxicology tests showed that all three hawks had died with rat poison in their systems.
That was just what some birdwatchers had suspected. On Wednesday, a parks department spokesman acknowledged that until last June the conservancy had used rat poison. But now the group uses snap traps in tamper-proof boxes that look like bait stations. However, the hawks’ deaths were more recent than last summer, and there was one place in the park where there was poison in February, around the time the urban park rangers reported the hawk that was behaving erratically. That place was outside the Central Park police precinct, on the 86th Street transverse.
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