Wildlife Damage Management, Internet Center for
Date of this Version
September 1968
Abstract
The pest bird involved in nearly 100% of our jobs has been the pigeon. We don't do killing in residential areas, nor have we done killing in downtown areas. All of our work has been confined to industrial plants and commercial buildings where strychnine, and we have used other methods that can kill the birds. In these plants we have had some problems with industrial or labor re-lations. These have been coped with by working with the union, with the labor relation people, and as high up as purchasing level. First of all we think that with strychnine if we kill these birds we are not moving them to other parts of the plant or to other plants in the immediate area. In Detroit there are a lot of large industrial plants. I have permission to mention Ford Motor Company here-I've checked with them - the Rouge River area was just a haven for pigeons and we did go to the labor relations and to the industrial hygiene and places like that to clear this before we went out and killed thousands of birds. We like to do most of our bird work, in fact we insist on it if it is to be a large job, in the winter months. This serves a lot of purposes really. Being in the pest control business it certainly fits our schedule better; we can have men there in the winter time where we might be pressed for help in the summer. We find that the plant manager and others will go along with this approach if you explain it to them. Here are a few of the advantages I think are worth mentioning.