French municipality promises to stop wringing pigeons’ necks

Saint-Herblain managed to shock activists with its cruel solution

Paris Animaux Zoopolis (PAZ) is an organization campaigning for humane treatment and improved rights for animals in France. Its activists were recently stunned to find out that one municipality, Saint-Herblain (located in the Nantes metropolitan area), uses a rather cruel method to control the proliferation of pigeons on its territory – snapping their necks.

The revelation came out during a survey done by the activist organization among French municipalities to find out their preferred methods to implement population control of the birds. The thing is PAZ was already aware that other cruel methods are commonly used to reduce the pigeon population, among these – gassing, electrification and trapping. However, Saint-Herblain stood out for their particular choice.

More specifically, breaking the pigeons’ necks was the choice of the company contracted by the town council to do something about the proliferation of birds and their droppings. The latter have been blamed as the reason behind some injuries on the external staircases of the town hall.

Now, that this unusual and cruel population control technique has made some headlines in France, the Saint-Herblain administration has promised to end the practice and issue a call for a new contractor.

Ironically, in neighbouring Germany, a local town hall decided that breaking pigeon necks was actually the least cruel method for eradicating the birds.

More humane methods of bird population control in the cities

PAZ and MP Benoît Bordat are asking for national regulations to be promulgated, which will ensure that more humane methods are mandated when it comes to bird population control in French cities.

According to the activists, using cruel methods is the subject of concern among citizens, worried about the protection of pigeons.

Meanwhile, PAZ reminds the public that there are already more ethical methods to control the population without resorting to killing. The most popular of these are using contraceptive feed or dovecotes.