If you are my age, you may have fond memories of Tom Lehrer’s darkly humorous ditty, Poisoning pigeons in the park (1959).
It is said that the song was inspired by the city of Boston’s attempts to keep numbers under control. They were literally poisoning pigeons. The practice wasn’t very contentious at the time, but times have changed.
I was reminded of the song on reading an article in Vilaweb. The article — in Catalan — targets the controversy around controlling the pigeon population in Barcelona. That part of the text is well worth reading, but more important is the analysis of why the practice is so controversial.
Like Boston, Barcelona used to kill pigeons to keep numbers down. Then, when the practice started to raise eyebrows, the city tried contraception. Unfortunately, the pigeons didn’t like the taste. Moreover, many ‘bird lovers’ fed them with uncontaminated maize which the birds liked better, diluting the contraceptive effect.
Not only were more chicks being born but as a result of the excessive feeding, more survived to have chicks of their own. Now, the population is exploding. An ecologically balanced 300-400 per km2 has become an unsustainable 1300-1700! The pigeons are a potential reservoir for Newcastle virus, salmonella and so on.
(Raptors, which successfully protect the El Prat airport, only displace the birds, without affecting the overall population. They are not a solution for the city itself.)
Joan Carles Senar, head of research at the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences, explains why killing pigeons—in the park or elsewhere—is controversial. It is a succinct analysis which could be applied to many other situations:
“We have a problem: in the past, nature was the domain of environmentalists. Now, with urbanisation, there is a new kind of animal lover: the animal rights activist. They mostly live in towns. Their views are heavily skewed by our conception of the domestic animal and by a saccharine view of nature which can be blamed on Walt Disney films. This is why they mainly focus on individual animals. In contrast, environmentalists think about the ecosystem and its balance. As a society, we need a more holistic view. We want the ecology of the city to work, not for an individual dove or a parrot to be happy.”
Well said!
Thanks to @alfonsdg.bsky.social and @senyorventura.bsky.social for sharing.