How to fight against the spread of pigeons without bad treatment? An association for the defense of animals pinpoints bad students in Val-d’Oise.
Place Navarre in Sarcelles, inspired by St. Mark’s Square in Venice, certainly has no tourists but lots of pigeons. Following complaints from residents last year, the municipality paid 4,500 euros to gas pigeons. A scandal for PAZ (Paris Animals Zoopolis), an association for the defense of animals which mobilized in front of the town hall of Sarcelles. “A dozen cages are placed on the roofs to trap the pigeons, to capture them and then they are transported to be gassed so they are placed in a CO2 box which is an airtight box where the pigeons are piled up where we put CO2 which is a slow and painful death” denounces Amandine Sanvisens, president of the PAZ association. A process that the town hall of Sarcelles says it has stopped.
AT Asnières, videos of dead pigeons in a cage before being thrown into a corner or others taken away alive in buckets shocked and prompted the municipality to change its technique.
Municipalities have opted for dovecotes which attract certain females to lay their eggs there, which are then treated so as not to hatch. Others choose occasional scaring with birds of prey.
But the most effective method would be to prevent the installation of nests in the city according to Jean-Michel Michaux, director of ISTAV (scientific and technical institute of animal in town) : “Most of the nests are inside buildings. The idea is to block these openings and then the pigeons can no longer enter and therefore no longer reproduce”. In Sarcelles, the city has planned to install a contraceptive dovecote, the PAZ association is counting on the citizens to stop giving bread, accept a peaceful cohabitation with the pigeons and above all to put pressure on their elected representatives to stop killing birds.
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