Pigeon culling exercises are par for the course in Singapore, and the authorities openly admit that they employ the services of contractors to put the birds down in residential estates with high volumes of complaints about their population.
Though folks generally appreciate town councils and the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) taking action on the issues involving pigeons, it’s a different story altogether when one is faced with the reality of the methods. A Facebook user took to social media to express her anger and disgust over a recent culling operation in her neighborhood that saw unidentified officials feeding the poisoned bait to pigeons. In a clip she uploaded, the birds can be seen pecking on some feed in the middle of a square, with a group of people watching the whole thing from a distance. Moments later, some of the pigeons start writhing and flopping around on the ground before becoming motionless.
“You’re witnessing people doing mean things,” said a person offscreen, believed to be Suraiyah K Abdulla, the individual who uploaded the video. “Feeding the pigeons food and killing them.”
Soon after, two men came to pick up the carcasses of the pigeons and tossed them in a rubbish bag. They did not appear to be bothered about the remaining poisoned bait left behind on the ground.
According to Suraiyah, her neighbors agreed that nobody faced problems with the pigeon population in the estate. “I have lived here for 38 over years, I don’t have respiratory issues directly linked to pigeon droppings, my neighborhood is clean except for numerous occasions when neighbors dump rubbish as and where they pleased,” she wrote, questioning how the culling is justified.
Folks chimed in their disapproval as well, pointing out that other animals could be poisoned by the spiked bait. Just last year, a dog died after eating bread left out for a pigeon culling exercise.
Others say that the methods are entirely justified.
The thing is, the authorities have been conducting such operations for years, despite the amount of pushback against culling pigeons. SPCA Singapore has urged local town councils to consider humane alternative methods of bird control, calling the poisoning of pigeons “cruel and inhumane”.
“Performing the exercise in a public place and leaving dying birds in plain sight of the public (including young children) may also desensitize people to the very act of killing and the suffering of the animals,” SPCA wrote.
In 2013, Animal Concerns Research and Education Society founder (and now Member of Parliament) Louis Ng wrote to the authorities to express his deep concern about the “inhumane pigeon culling practice”. He too suggested employing more humane measures to manage the pigeon population in urban areas and cited studies that culling is a completely ineffective solution to the issue.
The root of pigeon-related nuisances have always been the folks who keep feeding them, and as AVA found out, the people persist on doing so despite heavy penalties (a $500 fine) for pigeon feeding.
