The Valencia City Council has set itself the objective of controlling the pigeon plague in the city of Valencia. Through the Animal Welfare Office, the consistory will launch in the coming months a comprehensive strategy to control the current overpopulation of pigeons in Valencia, which already exceeds 36,000 specimens, 14,000 more than 4 years ago.
In collaboration with the technical staff of the company awarded the service, Lokímica, a mapping has been prepared to determine the real census of pigeon population, “to know where we are, to detect the most critical areas or with more problems in the city and, from that x-ray, establish a series of actions to help control this overpopulation,” explained this Tuesday the councilman Juan Carlos Caballero.
Citizen collaboration will also be paramount. “It is a mistake to think that feeding pigeons is an act of love, something positive, but quite the opposite. The leftover food attracts rodents and other pests such as ants and cockroaches, which can generate a public health problem. It also generates significant damage to urban heritage, because their droppings are corrosive and cause an ecological imbalance, since an excess of pigeons displaces other native bird species,” he said.
The technical staff has warned of the presence of “feeders” in the Patraix area, in addition to the problem of the transit and deposit of cereals in the port facilities, as a cause of the massive concentration of pigeons in Poblats Marítims. According to Las Provincias, it is not ruled out to impose sanctions for non-compliance.
For the moment, the feeders distributed around the city will be relocated with sterilizing feed and those that have proved ineffective will be removed. Nine of the 16 feeders will be kept in the same place.
Deterrent tools will also be used, such as controlled trapping or sound systems, in addition to coordinated work with municipal heritage technicians to adequately protect buildings, statues and other valuable elements, as well as uninhabited homes.
Throughout 2024, the City Council dealt with a hundred files related to the presence of pigeons in dwellings and received a total of 93 related complaints.
The pigeons that are captured will be transferred to ecological dovecotes. “No animal is slaughtered, unless their veterinary conditions so determine,” the councilman clarified.
In collaboration with Lokímica, the City Council will give talks in schools and senior centers to tackle the problem of pigeon overpopulation. The city has a budget of 220,000 euros to provide the pigeon control service for a period of two years.