Signs to discourage feeding of 'pest' birds

11:10am Sunday 11th November 2007

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MEET the new public enemy number one in York - the humble pigeon.

Residents and visitors to the city are being asked to stop feeding the birds, due to the growing problem of mess.

City of York Council has put up signs in King's Square, St Helen's Square, St Sampson's Square and Parliament Street, in an attempt to stem the rising pigeon population.

Terry Collins, the council's director of neighbourhood services, said the birds' excrement was becoming increasingly problematic for the authority's street-cleaners.

But the international Pigeon Control Advisory Service (PiCAS) said signs alone would not be enough to win the battle.

Director Emma Haskell has worked with authorities around the country, and invited the council to contact PiCAS to identify the causes and possible solutions to the problem.

She said: "Usually, just putting up signs does not tend to work. Often, there are very many reasons why people feel they need to feed pigeons, including religion, and therefore just signs as a stand-alone measure of control rarely work."

She said effective solutions were often dependent on trial and error, and available funding, but said examples from other cities included controlled-breeding areas for pigeons, or dedicated feeding zones to draw the birds away from the city centre.

Mr Collins said: "We are very proud of our beautiful city centre which attracts people from all over the world. Our street cleaning team works extremely hard to keep our streets and squares clean, but pigeon fouling is becoming a difficult problem.

"We know people like to feed the pigeons, but we are asking them to please support our city centre and not to encourage more pigeons to come. We would like to thank everyone for their help with this difficult problem."

Anita Singh, of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said: "Pigeon numbers will continue to grow if they are supplied with food that supports the bird population. The most humane and effective way of reducing pigeon populations is to gradually reduce and ultimately eliminate food sources supplied by people, which means discouraging people from feeding them and covering trash bins."

York councillor and animal rights campaigner Paul Blanchard said: "Feeding pigeons attracts them to areas that are not natural to them and exposes them to injury.

"It also results in all-year breeding which causes overpopulation. The birds then become stressed, allowing disease and parasites to spread more easily within the flock.

"For me, feeding the birds is almost the same as giving money to beggars - in the long run, you are not doing them any favours."

Asked what would happen if the signs did not work, the council's executive member for neighbourhood services Andrew Waller said: "We will use the best humane practices from around the country as to how we try to prevent our historic buildings being clogged up with pigeon droppings."

• We asked people in York what they thought of the ban

John Brown, 70, of Foxwood said: "If you feed them they will keep coming back. A few years ago, I re-roofed part of Stonegate and they had caused lots of damage."

Ros Glover, 54, a housewife from St Albans but originally from New Earswick, said: "I don't have a problem with them in the wild but I don't think we should be feeding them."

Danny Drewery, 18, a York College student of Pocklington, said, "We should keep feeding them. We should just clean up their mess."