PiCAS INTERNATIONAL

Columbiana City Commisioners and a local businesswoman in Lisbon, Ohio (USA) are currently considering a plan to relocate pigeons perching on the County Courthouse and adjacent buildings.  The plan, put forward by Stevie Halverstadt and her sister Renee Lewis, apparently involves cage trapping adult pigeons that are perching on the Courthouse as well as moving nests, complete with young birds, from Ms Halverstadt’s building to a new site a few blocks south. 

Ms Halverstadt has been provided with information from the US-based group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in order to come up with this plan.  PiCAS International works in partnership with PETA where humane and non-lethal resolutions to pigeon-related problems are concerned.  Ms Halverstadt has confirmed that she does not want to harm the birds and said: "They (pigeons) will go where their nests are."  Ms Halverstadt also suggested that once the birds have been moved, the next generation accepts the nests as their own and once the flock increases to 300 in number it will not increase further in size. 

Once the birds have been sucessfully relocated from the Courthouse, and the building adjacent owned by Ms Halverstadt, the Courthouse will be professionally cleaned and then protected with anti-roosting spikes.

Although PiCAS International applauds Ms Halverstadt’s approach to this issue based as it is on non-lethal controls, and indeed the City Commisioners instruction to have the birds released following the trapping operation rather than having them killed, the operation is unlikely to be sucessful and it will almost certainly involve the deaths of all of the baby pigeons that are moved.

Pigeons are apalling parents and will desert both their nests and their young if they are interfered with or moved.  Even if the nests, in this case, had simply been moved from one area of the building to another the parents would not have continued to rear their young.  In this proposed re-location operation the nests and contents are being moved several blocks and so in reality there is no chance whatsoever that the adults will continue to feed (or find)  their young.

It is also the case that when pigeons removed from their roosting and breeding areas, by whatever means, and are then released elsewhere, they will immediately return.  Even if the birds are taken several hundred miles away and then released they will arrive back ‘home’ before the vehicle that drove them to the release site!  In this case the trapping and nest relocation operation will not resolve the City’s pigeon problem although the installation of deterrents on the Courthouse will hopefully resolve roosting issues on that building.

Ms Halverstadt’s view that flock size will grow to 300 birds, but not exceed that figure, is probably incorrect.  Pigeon flock size is dictated absolutely by the extent of available food and if food sources increase the instinctive response within the flock will be to breed until such a time as the flock size has grown to the point where it is fully exploiting the food source.  If food sources reduce, however, then the incidence of breeding within the flock will reduce accordingly.  Pigeons control their own numbers quite efficiently without any interference from man based almost absolutely on the extent of available food. 

We sincerely hope that both Ms Halverstadt and Ms Lewis, as well as the City Commissioners, manage to reslove their respective pigeon-related problems, but unless area-wide controls are introduced to reduce flock size, based on PiCAS methodology, pigeon-related problems will continue unabated.  Further information on area-wide controls can be found on the Area-wide Controls page.