“The falconer will lure the birds into a trap, hit them over the head with a wooden stick to stun them, and then break their necks.”
Needless to say, animal rights activists were appalled by this plan.
They didn’t ask me, but if they did, I’d say that Germany has to play by different rules, and that all German political entities should probably tread lightly when it comes to the inhumane exterminations of complete populations, even if they are pigeons.
And under no circumstances should they call it the final solution.
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All dark humor aside, I found this interesting:
Critics say that as well as being cruel, pigeon culls aren’t really effective since any remaining birds will reproduce and replenish the population. Remarkably, some studies show that pigeon numbers can even increase following a cull. This was the case in Basel, Switzerland, which had a pigeon population of around 20,000. From 1961 to 1985, the city killed around 100,000 pigeons each year, but the population remained stable.
Apparently that same strategy wouldn’t produce the same result with fish. The biologists keep telling us that we’re destroying fish populations by over-fishing. So my conclusion is that we need to like the taste of pigeons, because unlike fish, they seem to be a self-renewing source of food.
doesn’t work fish fish because fish are part of an ecosystem – everything in the ocean eats one another. Pigeons were meant to be at the bottom of the food chain, a food source for other creatures like raptors. But the predators moved out of cities, so they have nothing to check their population, and now pigeons aren’t part of an actual ecosystem. Animals meant to be food sources reproduce quickly as their defense (think rabbits), so pigeons just keep reproducing.
You don’t see pigeons outside of urban areas because they get eaten by hawks and owls.
With fish, the ones that taste good get over-fished by the thousands, and ALSO get predated by everything in the ocean because they taste good to them, too. Other animals move into their space, and organisms beneath the food fish increase. Eventually, there is almost no space for the fish to exist.
All the more reason why we should learn to eat pigeons, maybe even raise them as a food crop.
We just have to give them a fancy name, like Cornish Game Hen. Yum!
I think they already have one. They call them “squab.”