Urban pigeons are among the most numerous and least-considered urban wildlife species, facing significant welfare challenges from poisoning, trapping, culling, and disease.
Urban pigeons are often treated as pests without regard for their capacity to suffer. Indiscriminate poisoning causes prolonged, painful deaths and risks secondary poisoning of raptors. Leg ring injuries from entanglement in string are common and cause significant suffering. Contraceptive population management is both more humane and more effective than culling for long-term population control, as culling simply creates vacancy that new birds fill. Recognising pigeons as individuals capable of suffering, rather than nuisances to be eliminated, is the first step toward humane population management.