Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver Culling Pigeons with Poison Gas!

Photos

Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver Culling Pigeons with Poison Gas!

see larger image

uploaded by Lee Lecu

Is guess this is necessary (according to the article), but I did not know we had to revert to such a Nazi like draconian measure?

PS: The highlight tool is NOT working.

LL.

LGH culling pigeonsHospital says they're a health hazardJames Weldon, North Shore NewsPublished: Friday, July 25, 2008

THE authority that runs Lions Gate Hospital has come under fire from animal rights activists for its decision to trap and euthanize pigeons for health reasons.

The hospital, which has been struggling to control the birds for some time, hired a sanitation company last month to begin a gradual process of extermination. Since July 1, technicians with Carolina-based Steritech have been luring the pigeons into a cage on the hospital's roof, collecting them from the enclosure weekly, and then killing them with carbon dioxide. While exact figures were not available, the company estimated it has been catching the birds at a rate of around 10 a week.

That, says the B.C. SPCA, is only acceptable if the hospital has exhausted every other option for removing the birds.

"It's handling the pest control from a one-pronged approach," said Sara Dubois, manager of wildlife services. "By just trying to eliminate the animals that are there now, you're never going to, long-term, create a solution.

She suggested that the hospital could instead employ a professional falconer to scare the birds away. "The hawk doesn't actually kill any of the pigeons. It's trained to scare the bejeebies out of them, and they don't ever want to roost in that site again."

But the cull is necessary to protect the safety of patients and staff, said Anna Marie D'Angelo, a spokeswoman for Vancouver Coastal Health, the authority that runs LGH. "This has been a problem for years," she said. "They're a health hazard."

The birds, which roost by the hundreds on the roof and other areas of the building, defecate in great volume all over the site, she said. That material, which tends to harbour harmful bacteria, can get into the hospital's air intakes, endangering the lives of patients.

"With healthy people, you get flu-like symptoms (from the droppings)," said D'Angelo. "For people with low immunity, it can get serious."

The problem can also be expensive, she added. Last year, the hospital spent $15,000 to clean bird droppings off its windows.

The trapping and killing is done in the most humane way possible, according to Steve Wittig, branch manager for Steritech.

The birds -- which by law can be culled without a permit -- are lured into a cage two feet tall and three feet deep, he said. Part of the enclosure is covered by a tarp to protect them from the sun and rain, and there is plenty of food and water to last a week. Every seven days, workers take out captured birds and place them in a "professional euthanization chamber," where they are suffocated with CO2.

The process is painless, said Wittig.

But Dubois doesn't buy that, because the birds aren't anaesthetized before they are placed in the chamber.

"It's not a nice thing," she said. "They should never be actually suffocated by the gas. If the animal is pre-sedated, then it's anesthetized and it doesn't feel pain."

Similar concerns have been voiced by staff at LGH, said D'Angelo. But while the authority understands such reservations, the issues they raise are outweighed by the needs of patients.