Spanish city to send its pigeons far from home

AUTHORITIES in a Spanish city are preparing to relocate thousands of pigeons in a rare humane attempt to deal with nuisance birds harassing tourists and locals dining in its plazas.

Some 5,000 urban pigeons in Cádiz will be moved 500 miles away to a province of Valencia in a departure from more traditional techniques used by councils across the world, which include shooting and poisoning.

In their new country dovecote, the birds will rediscover the rural delights of foraging for seeds, as opposed to fighting over breadcrumbs and city rubbish.

While Madrid has recently outlined a plan for marksmen to cull its invasive populations of parakeets, and councils across Britain deploy hawks and electric shock systems, Cádiz has chosen “the most respectful and sustainable method” to control the population, according to Álvaro de la Fuente, the city’s environment chief.

Prompted by complaints from restaurants about the number of rock doves in Cádiz’s centre, the city council, run by the Left-wing Podemos party, commissioned a pigeon census.

Mr De la Fuente’s department decided that the population of 8,000 was three to four times too many for the small city, and drew up a plan under which the birds are trapped, put through health checks and transported to their new home in Riba-Roja de Túria, 20 miles inland from the city of Valencia.

Antonio de María Ceballos, president of the Cádiz hoteliers association Horeca, said that pigeons had “turned the city centre into their own private habitat, leaving excrement on the ground, building façades, restaurant and café terraces and their customers”.

“It has become intolerable. We reckon we have lost 20 per cent of our business to pigeons,” the manager of a tapas bar on the city’s Cathedral square told the newspaper La Voz de Cádiz.

Cádiz council is also preparing an information campaign aimed at preventing people from feeding the birds, a practice that also leads to a rise in rodent populations.

Since taking over Cádiz city hall in 2015’s local elections, the Podemos council team has implemented a number of animal rights policies, including a ban on circus acts involving animals and preventing shelters from putting down unwanted pets.

To control the number of stray cats fed by animal-loving locals, the council handed out licenses to 40 designated cat feeders.