By Trevor Sinker
Pigeons are a common sight in Centretown, often congregating on city sidewalks and swooping overhead. While not universally despised, few Centretown residents seem to harbour a penchant for the feathery, waddling flocks that can be found searching, as usual, for food in the urban forest where they make their home.
“I don’t like them,” says Maaya Goto near the corner of Slater and Bank, referring to Centretown’s resident pigeons.
But there ARE pigeons in Canada – forest dwelling ones – who are endangered due to habitat destruction even though responsible logging practices could protect them.
The band-tailed pigeon, which lives primarily on the west coast of North America and are distinguished not only by their large size, but by their yellow legs and wide gray tail band, have been declining steadily since the 1940s, according to Andy Miller, a bird expert with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee.
He says that many band-tailed pigeons – the west coast version of the passenger pigeon — were shot by hunters in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but were making a comeback until the 1940s. “There were zillions of them because there were zillions of old-growth forests,” says Miller.
“It was a hunting issue (then), now it’s a habitat availability issue,” he says.
Band-tailed pigeons feed on fruit that grows on bushes and trees, which appear in openings of old-growth forests after a large tree falls.
“Now we’re reaching, especially on the coast, a real crisis in that there are very few old- growth forests left – the pigeon is struggling,” says Miller.
He adds cutting down trees is one solution because it thins the forest canopy and allows for more light to reach the pigeon’s habitat. More light means more fruit for the birds to feed on.
Studies show the band-tailed pigeon population in the United States and Canada declined about 2.5 per cent each year from 1966 to 2001.
Late last month, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada met in Ottawa to assess several species considered potentially at risk. The band-tailed pigeon was included on that list in the highest priority category in late November.
The organizatio is made up of experts from provincial and territorial government wildlife agencies, federal government departments, Aboriginal Canadians, and representatives from the Canadian Museum of Nature.
There are now 455 species considered by the committee to be at risk, including 172 species classified endangered.
Adding the band-tailed pigeon to the list is particularly pressing after a separate study released last month warned that more than 15,000 plants and animals are at risk of genetic destruction.
Miller says band-tailed pigeons are one of the least understood North American birds because they are very mobile.
“They’re nomadic because they have to be on the move constantly to find food,” he says, adding, “it’s so transient by nature — it will show up in really bizarre places once and a while.”
One band-tailed pigeon surprised and delighted bird watchers when it appeared in November 2003 in London, Ont. The reactions of hundreds of bird fans that flocked to see the rare visitor were varied.
“It’s everything from ‘wow that’s a really neat bird to ‘yup, OK, that’s on my list,’” says Hugh Casbourn, a London bird-watcher.
He says the bird stayed the winter in London and was last seen in mid-April of this year.
He’s been interested in birds for 30 years, and says this was his first sighting of a band-tailed pigeon.
Casbourn says the bird was probably blown into the area by a storm.
“For a lot of people it was their 400th Ontario species,” he says.
“It’s considered to be a vagrant to Ontario but there’ve been more records recently,” says Alfred Adamo, another bird-watcher.
The sightings will be fewer though if their numbers continue to drop.
The government’s risk assessment of the band-tailed pigeons must be done quickly to determine if the bird needs to be added to the endangered species list.
More money invested in researching these birds would improve our understanding of them and as a result, ways to protect them.
To begin, the Canadian government needs to continue to work with American wildlife officials because band-tailed pigeons are still hunted in the United States and Mexico.
Secondly, their habitat must be protected. Cutting down trees to open gaps in the forest is expensive, and so forestry companies should be offered incentives by governments to alter their harvesting practices to protect band-tailed pigeons.
“Unless the forest industry starts managing the forests sivaculturally in a more sophisticated way, the future of the band-tailed pigeon is extremely bad,” says Miller.
So the next time you see pigeons in downtown Ottawa, remember that while the steel and pavement of Centretown may provide an urban jungle for city pigeons, their forest-dwelling counterparts aren’t as lucky – they’ll continue to struggle for survival unless the government takes appropriate action very soon.