Community Corner

Oak Park Pigeon Killing Plan Flies the Coop

One plan to exterminate pesky pigeons scrapped in favor of other "exclusion" methods.

Just 30 seconds into Monday's Oak Park Village Board meeting, a controversial plan to kill a gaggle of pesky pigeons ended with village officials opting for the installation of a new netting system under the Marion Street viaduct instead of "humane euthanization."

The underpass on Marion Street between North and South Boulevards, where pigeon droppings had become problematic, was scheduled for a powerwashing and painting within the year anyway, Village President David Pope said, so installing a netting system to prevent the birds from congregating there would dovetail with that scheduled upkeep.

The solution drew loud applause from the crowd in the village's chambers, including those who showed up representing animal anti-cruelty groups.

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"I'm here for the pigeons. I'm here to speak against killing them," said Marie Perkins, wearing a Mercy for Animals T-shirt. "I was walking down Lake Street a week ago and I did notice a little, little, little bit of pigeon droppings but the rest of the street was filled with much worse that humans left. And I'm sure you're not going to propose that we euthanize humans for what they leave."

The dust-up is rooted in a November e-mail to the village from the Downtown Oak Park business group highlighting an increase in the pigeon nuisance at the underpass, which links Marion Street's business districts.

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Preventative wire netting was installed there some 20 years ago, officials said, but after a recent underpass remodeling — part of the renovations for South Marion Street's — the pigeons were able to sneak through more netting and continue lingering.

During a sparsely attended May 21 village board meeting, officials began discussing solutions. 

"[The pigeons are] not massive and taking over the village, but we have had increasing concern," said interim village manager Cara Pavlicek, adding that humane euthanization was an option currently prohibited by village code.

"If you just want to consider this and bring it back, or if you say 'no, we don't even want to talk about this,' we understand and respect either direction," she said.

Mike Charley, the village's environmental health supervisor, said he consulted with an expert from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's wildlife division who helped monitor the underpass then recommended solutions. Among the options: more pigeon "exclusion" methods like additional netting and spikes, trapping and releasing the birds, and euthanization, or a mix of all of the above. Here's footage from the May 21 discussion; click agenda item "A".

So was mass killing of the birds ever a serious option? That depends on what you've read.

Charley told the trustees, and later the Wednesday Journal, that euthanization wasn't "even our first or second option...we prefer to exclude pigeons from an area."

But here's how the Chicago Tribune quoted him toward the top of Monday's story, before outlining some of the other measures used to curb the pigeon problem in Chicago's suburbs. "Our goal is to remove the entire flock...We want to remove every pigeon living under the viaduct."

At Monday's village board meeting, Pope took aim at the Tribune, saying village officials didn't get a fair shake in the story, splashed on Monday's front page, or even a chance to comment.

"It would've given us the opportunity to help clarify the situation...but instead we ended up on the front page above the fold today, which is always sort of fun when that happens."


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