Zurich decides to expand pigeon lofts instead of culling
Zurich's city parliament has referred a motion for supervised pigeon lofts based on the Augsburg model to the city council.
On Wednesday, Zurich's city parliament instructed the city council to draw up a bill creating the necessary budget for expanding supervised pigeon lofts.
The debate was triggered by a video filmed in May at Stadelhofen station: game wardens captured pigeons there and killed them immediately afterwards, stuffed into black rubbish bags. The footage caused outrage across Switzerland and led to a demonstration with around 150 to 300 participants.
Previous practice without success
Until now, the city of Zurich killed up to 1’727 pigeons annually to curb the population. Even a feeding ban failed to reverse the trend. Because urban pigeons breed several times a year and continue to be fed despite the ban, the number of animals remained high.
The motion's sponsors, Selina Walgis and Sibylle Kauer (both Greens), are now calling for an animal-friendly regulation concept based on the so-called Augsburg model: in supervised pigeon lofts, eggs are to be specifically removed or replaced with dummies, partly with the support of volunteers. The city council must now set out the specific costs in its bill.
Narrow majority in the council
The left-wing bloc in the council backed the motion. Moritz Bögli (AL) demanded that funds be committed now in order to solve the problem in the long term, arguing that the previous approach was no longer tenable. Mathias Egloff (SP) spoke of a path towards a healthy population.
Resistance came from the bourgeois parties: the GLP pointed to cheaper alternatives, Thomas Bühler (Die Mitte) considered the existing three pigeon lofts sufficient, and the FDP feared excessive costs that would not solve the underlying problem of feeding. In the end, the motion was narrowly referred to the city council by 61 votes to 53. City councillor Simone Brander (SP) announced that she intended to implement the motion.
A model with signal effect
The decision shows that urban wildlife conflicts can be resolved without killing or trapping, provided there is the political will to do so. This very question of animal-welfare-compliant alternatives also arises in the case of recreational hunting on free-living Wild animals outside the city, where killing still remains the first and often only response to perceived conflicts. Whether Zurich now consistently implements the Augsburg model will likely only become clear once the city council presents its announced bill.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
All articles are written by IG Wild beim Wild as well as by external co-authors. Research, structuring and editorial processes may be supported by AI-assisted tools.
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