During this year's Wimbledon Tennis tournament in England, there is a list of the order of precautions the tournament is taking to prevent pigeons from entering the tennis courts during a match and disrupting the players. I am definitely OK with them taking civil, humane ways of treating with the pigeon problem, because the players are playing long matches (many over 3 hours), and any delay could be the cause of injury.
However, I do not believe that the way that they are going about this is a good way. They are releasing hawks, a known predator of the pigeon species, around the grounds in order to scare the pigeons out of the area. This seems very effective, but what about if a pigeon comes into the court? Will the hawk swoop down in the middle of a match and eat the pigeon up? That does not sound like what I want to see when I am spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to watch a tennis match. Furthermore, I don't think that this is a humane way, obviously.
But this looks humane next to the next item on the list, if the hawks don't work. This is occurring this year, and the heads of the tourney went to Plan B. There were several marksmen who were brought in to shoot down pigeons that had gotten past the two hawks unnoticed. The worst part: the pigeons aren't even on the courts! They are flying around the restaurant area and the player's lawns. This is terrible. Wimbledon claims that the droppings being found on outdoor restaurant tables pose a health threat to guests. OK. That makes sense and can be seen as acceptable. However, I don't see the death penalty as a reasonable punishment to leaving your behinds in an inconvenient place.
The staff has many options that they could have taken, instead of making what should be a last resort a first resort. They could have moved the guests inside a building, put a tarp over the area, brought in a hawk and not released it, bring in loud noises that would scare away the pigeons, or bring in other experts in the area to get the pigeons out of there.
I for one will not stand for the killing of pigeons in order to make us a little more comfortable. Thanks for reading and please comment/rate.
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I would imagine that as the hawks are merely used as a deterrent for the pigeons that they probably keep them fed so they don't have any desire to actually eat the pigeons. I'm sure the directors at Wimbledon don't want you to have to see a hawk tear into a pigeon during the middle of a match anymore than you do. But a hawk eating a pigeon isn't cruel, that's just nature.
While shooting the birds does seem a bit extreme, they are only using it as a last resort and only in one or two areas. Furthermore, wild birds do carry some diseases and I for one wouldn't want them flying around and excreting where food is being handled and eaten. I'm pretty sure that's a definite health violation... Although I do agree, there do seem to be some other measures, such as the erection of a tent, that probably could've helped in that situation too. But then again, we don't know what all they've tried and they may have actually done so without seeing any sort of improvement. I imagine shooting the birds is also probably cheaper than buying another hawk and paying for a handler and caretaker... Just a thought
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I never thought that about the hawks being fed beforehand. That was stupid, but thank you. I can't believe I didn't think about that saying that PETA wasn't all over Wimbledon until the recent events.
And you are right that watching a hawk eat a pigeon isn't cruel, but when a human deliberately introduces the hawk to eat the pigeon for human comfort, this is cruel.
I assume that they didn't do any other preemptive measures saying that people who were there say it was a first resort (after the pigeons got into the two separate areas)..but if they did then introducing another hawk (with more money, but worth every penny) would have been the acceptable action.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/nharris1032