A TARGETED pigeon trapping program in Bathurst’s Machattie Park has failed to catch a single bird – but Councillor Bobby Bourke reckons he would have no such problems.
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A report to Bathurst Regional Council has detailed a number of strategies employed over the past two years in a bid to curb pest bird numbers in Bathurst’s central business district. Since March 2013, a total of 1682 pigeons have been removed by council programs, though the strategies have had wdely varying levels of success.
Contract shooters have been responsible for permanently removing 593 pigeons from private businesses and council facilities during three separate culls in July 2013, September 2015 and November 2015, while an initial trapping program in March 2013 removed 904 birds from Bathurst’s CBD.
But it was an admission in the report that council failed to catch a single bird during a trapping program in Machattie Park in May 2014 that had Cr Bourke questioning just how serious council was about eradicating the pigeons.
Cr Bourke wants to see a large cage installed in Machattie Park and would even encourage children to feed the pigeons to entice them into the trap.
He says it would be a simple job each night to take away the roosting birds to be humanely euthanased. But environmental officer Joel Little said that it was not as simple as that.
“With regard to Machattie Park, we found the pigeons would go there to feed but they don’t live there,” he said. “And there is so much food around, particularly near the duck pond, that it was very hard to lure them into the trap that was only 20 metres away.”
Mr Little estimated there were around 3000 pigeons living in the CBD when council started its eradication program and said the number was about one-third of that now.
Still, Cr Bourke wants to see more done.
“Nil pigeons trapped in Machattie Park? Come on, everyone knows that’s where they are,” he said. “If we’re getting nil pigeons then we’re just not trying hard enough.”
Cr Bourke has previously suggested putting a bounty on the head of pest birds in the CBD to encourage young people to carry out their own trapping programs, while Cr Graeme Hanger has canvassed the option of lacing the pigeons’ food with contraceptives.
