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Birds getting caught in Topgolf’s towering 120-foot-tall nets are, sadly, par for the course.
Animal rights activists are appalled at the $1.1 billion dollar company’s alleged disregard for the creatures — claiming that over the last eight years, thousands of birds across the country have been harmed in its 12-story nets.
Now, they’re taking legal action.
Attorney Nora Marino, president of the nonprofit Legal Action Network for Animals, demanded in a letter sent Friday to Topgolf that it immediately acquire equipment to free the birds, “within a reasonable amount of time” using “only qualified and/or licensed wildlife rescuers and/or rehabilitators.”
“It is our opinion that when any bird is trapped in your netting, and is consequently caused to suffer, be injured, and/or die . . . that is an act of animal cruelty,” and against the law in New York state, she said.
Topgolf has 103 locations around the country, including one in New York and three in New Jersey.
“Assuming there are 103 120-foot nets with an average catch of five birds per year over the last eight years — then 4,120 birds are affected,” Tampa Bay Raptor Rescue president Barbara Walker told The Post.
“More importantly, this number can go up exponentially over future years.”
Strong Island Animal Rescue League president Frank Floridia told The Post he received calls about hawks tangled in the net of the Holtsville, LI Topgolf twice last month.
“I was alerted by a customer playing golf that there was a bird stuck in the net and that the people there were blowing horns and throwing balls at the bird trying to get it out, and they continued to play and keep the place open for hours while this bird was still stuck,” Floridia said.
Topgolf did call the police and fire department, but the 100-foot ladders could not reach the trapped bird.
“The bird ended up freeing itself,” said Floridia, although he was unsure if it survived.
“And within a week, we get a call that there’s another bird stuck in there.”
Floridia said the second time it happened, Topgolf employees were quicker to shut the facility down, “because they knew that people were watching.”
Walker, a licensed federal and state wildlife rehabilitator, recalled a report she received in February from a man at the Topgolf in St. Petersburg, Fla., located near a nature preserve.
“He was sending me videos and telling me that there were eight vultures caught in the net,” Walker told The Post. “They were throwing up midair.”
“I decided to go out to Facebook, and I put in ‘Topgolf Bird,’ and I found story after story, video evidence after video evidence,” Walker said.
“Fire departments are shooting the birds down with hoses . . . There is one video where a bald eagle is on the ground struggling in the net.”
Topgolf did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Walker said Topgolf’s procedures for taking down birds “differs from site to site,” with no company-wide protocol in place.
“These are really untrained people dealing with a pretty complicated rescue with zero species knowledge,” Walker said.
“An average person can’t just go up there and take the hawk or an osprey down,” Floridia added. “It has to be a rehabber that knows how to work with animals”
“If they cut one little rung on that net, they may have to replace the entire net, so it’s much cheaper for them to just rip the bird out, break bones, break feathers, break wings,” attorney Marino said.
Even if a bird escapes the net and does not die — impossible to prove since they aren’t tracked — the terror and injury suffered in the time it is trapped amounts to animal cruelty.
“The animal does not have to die for it to constitute animal cruelty,” she said.
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