Pigeons are among the most persecuted urban birds globally, while racing pigeons face their own welfare challenges. Their welfare deserves more attention than they typically receive.
Urban pigeon culling is ineffective long-term because populations rapidly rebound. Trapped pigeons are killed by cervical dislocation or CO2 — methods that vary in welfare quality and are applied to animals showing clear stress responses. Egg oiling (coating eggs with oil to prevent hatching) is a more humane population management approach but is widely underused. Racing pigeon mortality at sea represents significant individual suffering — birds that fail to find their way home die from exhaustion, starvation, or predation. Released doves at events are domestic birds ill-equipped to survive in the wild, typically dying within days from predation, starvation, or exposure.