World Cup 2026: ‘Honk if you love geese’ activists bring unusual protest to MetLife Stadium spectacle

Amidst the Morocco and Brazil fans converting on New York’s MetLife Stadium for the World Cup Group C clash between the two teams on Saturday, one of the World Cup’s less visible cause celebres was present on the roadside en route to the 82,000 stadium.

Waving handmade signs reading ‘Honk if you love geese’ and ’No to gassing geese’ were a dozen protesters standing beneath 30-degrees temperatures on the edge of Paterson Plank Road and Gotham Parkway on the way to the tournament venue, prompting bemused glances and remarks from fans convening on the event.

The group of wildlife activists - who belong to the Animal Protection of New Jersey (APL) - are part of an initiative to protect the Liberty Park Canada Geese in Peapack-Gladstone, a borough in New Jersey - have been organising for several weeks to raise awareness to their cause outside the World Cup venue.

Further protests and leafleting events are planned in North Bergen, New Jersey on Saturday June 20, as well as at Teterboro Airport seven days later.

“How Canada geese are treated is my litmus test for the current state of humanity,” an Animal Protection League sympathiser posted on social media. “There are so many different ways to co-exist with them, yet so many people want to dispose of them like they are insects, all because their life is somehow inconvenienced by them.

“Ugly people, that’s what they are.”

The protesters are combating plans put in place by the borough council, who authorised the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to euthanise the geese in Liberty Park in order to control the excessive fecal droppings left in the public space by the animals.

Wildlife advocacy groups have been staging intermittent protests to push back against the lethal measures planned, which include placing the animals in portable containers and exposing them to fatal volumes of carbon dioxide.

Geese droppings can be a concern for water quality and avian flu among other diseases, while the faeces represents a visible and odour nuisance for local residents and park users.

In Mexico City, the were visible protests outside the Estadio Azteca both from families of the disappeared and social-justice movements across Mexico, as well as from teachers demanding the reversal of unpopular pension reforms and significant salary increases.

The World Cup is expected to see further protests from groups including pro-Palestinian activists and critics of FIFA’s pro-Israel stance, Iranian dissidents and anti-regime groups, immigrant-rights organisations, and community-rights campaigners during the course of the competition.