Coo d’état: Basel struggles to enforce pigeon-feeding ban

This pigeon at Zurich station is safe. Unless it gets on a train to Basel. Keystone

Police in the Swiss canton of Basel City have issued only eight fines since a ban on pigeon feeding came into force in July 2020. Enforcement of the ban is difficult, the cantonal government admitted in a statement on Friday.

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They said pigeons continue to be fed very often, both intentionally and unintentionally. This creates a massive oversupply of food for the birds, according to the report on the legal admissibility of the pigeon initiative, which was submitted in April with over 3,000 signatures.

The initiative calls for the city’s pigeon population to be halved to around 3,000-4,000. This is to be achieved, among other things, by opening at least one pigeon loft per neighbourhood where the animals are fed. The canton closed the eight existing pigeon lofts in stages from 2016.

The referendum also demands veterinary care for sick and injured pigeons as well as official care places and, if necessary, permanent care places. The pigeon population should also be controlled by replacing eggs with dummies.

+ Bern finds new approach to limit the pigeon populationExternal link

In 2016 the urban pigeon population was estimated to be 5,000-8,000. It is unclear how many pigeons currently live in Basel City, as the canton does not monitor them, according to the report.

The initiative “does not demand anything impossible and is feasible”, the cantonal government writes. It is therefore asking the cantonal parliament to approve the legal admissibility of the initiative “New urban pigeon concept for the canton of Basel City”.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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