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Pigeon plan unlikely to work as planned
Pardon our bluntness, but we think Willcox City Council has lost its collective mind.
The city fathers have approved paying $2,500 to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to go around and massacre pigeons in the city. All this because former mayor Mick Easthouse and other business owners have announced that there is a "tremendous problem" with pigeons in Willcox.
There are so many problems to this that it is hard to know where to start. In the first place, of all the aesthetic problems facing Willcox, pigeons hardly seem the most critical. Hauling off a lot of junked cars and rusting farm machinery would be more effective.
It was suggested that this problem was serious because pigeons carry diseases. Okay. Who has been brought to NCCH with pigeon-related illnesses lately? Are children calling in sick to school? Do we have a silent epidemic of pigeon diseases? I think not. Moreover, pigeons don't carry disease any more frequently than any other bird. Nobody has called for wiping out sparrows, or Sand Hill Cranes for that matter.
Now, mosquitoes do carry an illness that is of concern to both people and livestock - West Nile Virus. But there doesn't seem to be the same urgency about killing bugs.
The school superintendent noted that the schools had to do repairs last year because of pigeon droppings. He also noted that using chicken wire or raccoon wire helped. But apparently extermination is preferable.
Apart from the questionable need to eradicate an entire species in Willcox, the method is up for discussion. The USDA can trap them and gas them, but then we need to count on their extracting the poor confused cardinal who flew into the trap. Or they can put poison out and kill the birds. Of course that will significantly lower the cat population and have an effect on predator animals. Years of DDT should have taught us that poisons concentrate at the top of the food chain. And then there is shooting. After all, Willcox is the Wild West. Why not have the USDA going around town shooting birds. That will be an attractive spectacle for the tourists we so desperately want.
But the silliest part of all of this is that it won't work. Pigeons come where there is food. If you pay to kill the 5,000 birds in town and don't remove the food source, 5,000 more will move in. Anyone who owns livestock knows you can kill every fly in your barn, but the next day you will have a million more flies. They go where they can eat. So do pigeons.
And a couple of people who are experts in birds told the Range News just that. They also told us no pigeon eradication program has ever been successful. It's odd that the city felt no need to get the same expert opinions. It is also remarkable how this problem went from invisible to priority overnight.
But the result is an unworkable solution that may be more dangerous than the problem and makes us look downright silly.
The city fathers have approved paying $2,500 to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to go around and massacre pigeons in the city. All this because former mayor Mick Easthouse and other business owners have announced that there is a "tremendous problem" with pigeons in Willcox.
There are so many problems to this that it is hard to know where to start. In the first place, of all the aesthetic problems facing Willcox, pigeons hardly seem the most critical. Hauling off a lot of junked cars and rusting farm machinery would be more effective.
It was suggested that this problem was serious because pigeons carry diseases. Okay. Who has been brought to NCCH with pigeon-related illnesses lately? Are children calling in sick to school? Do we have a silent epidemic of pigeon diseases? I think not. Moreover, pigeons don't carry disease any more frequently than any other bird. Nobody has called for wiping out sparrows, or Sand Hill Cranes for that matter.
Now, mosquitoes do carry an illness that is of concern to both people and livestock - West Nile Virus. But there doesn't seem to be the same urgency about killing bugs.
The school superintendent noted that the schools had to do repairs last year because of pigeon droppings. He also noted that using chicken wire or raccoon wire helped. But apparently extermination is preferable.
Apart from the questionable need to eradicate an entire species in Willcox, the method is up for discussion. The USDA can trap them and gas them, but then we need to count on their extracting the poor confused cardinal who flew into the trap. Or they can put poison out and kill the birds. Of course that will significantly lower the cat population and have an effect on predator animals. Years of DDT should have taught us that poisons concentrate at the top of the food chain. And then there is shooting. After all, Willcox is the Wild West. Why not have the USDA going around town shooting birds. That will be an attractive spectacle for the tourists we so desperately want.
But the silliest part of all of this is that it won't work. Pigeons come where there is food. If you pay to kill the 5,000 birds in town and don't remove the food source, 5,000 more will move in. Anyone who owns livestock knows you can kill every fly in your barn, but the next day you will have a million more flies. They go where they can eat. So do pigeons.
And a couple of people who are experts in birds told the Range News just that. They also told us no pigeon eradication program has ever been successful. It's odd that the city felt no need to get the same expert opinions. It is also remarkable how this problem went from invisible to priority overnight.
But the result is an unworkable solution that may be more dangerous than the problem and makes us look downright silly.
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