A DUP Alderman has said the war with marauding pigeons at a County Down town square is far from over.
Alderman Stephen McIlveen spoke out at Ards and North Down Borough Council, reacting to reports pigeons had won a victory against the council over their battle for occupancy at Conway Square in Newtownards.
Earlier this month councillors agreed no further action at a committee meeting after an update by officers stating that their efforts to clear the popular square of the birds had come to nothing - in fact the opposite had come to pass with pigeon numbers rising.
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Elected representatives at the February meeting of the council’s Community and Wellbeing Committee two weeks ago were given the option to take the battle against pigeon numbers in Conway Square to the next level, by introducing trapping and falcons, at a further cost of £25,000.
None of the elected representatives in the chamber were prepared to countenance this line of action. The original motion to tackle the pigeon problem was passed by members in November 2022.
A recent council report states: “The Environmental Health Protection and Development Service has made recommendations for bird proofing improvements at Newtownards Arts Centre and is carrying out surveillance of bird movements to identify roost sites and put control measures in place. This alone has not been successful in reducing the number of birds and in fact an increase in the bird population has been observed over recent months.”
But at the full meeting of the council this week, DUP Alderman Stephen McIlveen was still full of fighting talk, and stated "implications" that council action was over on the matter "misrepresented" the situation.
He told the chamber at Bangor Castle: “This was an item that fell on the night, it didn’t receive a proposer or seconder, indeed no commentary whatsoever. I completely understand that at no stage have council members ever called for a cull of the animals.
“My only concern is how it was misrepresented in the media - there was an implication out there that this is the end of it, that we are not doing anything more in relation to pigeons. That we tried everything, and they can just do what they like - that wasn’t the case and that is not what this report says.
“There are other things we are doing - we are proceeding with the by-laws for instance. There is work to be done in and around education - we do know that the main cause of the growth of the flock is the feeding of the birds.
“Even if for some reason we did go ahead and agreed to a cull, which we wouldn’t do, the fact that people are still out there with kilogram bags of feed, the flock will always come back, and will always grow to meet the food that is made available for them. That is the fundamental point we need to address.”
He said: "The implication is we have exhausted everything - (but) we haven’t tried everything. All we have done is basically put up four signs - we haven’t done any enforcement around that because we haven’t got the by-laws in place yet to do that.
“I want to make the point that there is still more that we are doing as a council, and that we should be doing in terms of addressing this. Because while people like to see the pigeons around there, equally businesses on the square are tortured by them.
“They are paying for café space outside and the pigeons are fouling over the tables and chairs. There are people who won’t go anywhere near the square because of the numbers of pigeons, the swooping makes them fearful and they won’t go there.”
A year ago elected representatives agreed to introduce a new by-law which forbids the feeding of pigeons in Conway Square - this by-law is still to be passed, and would be the first of its kind in Northern Ireland. Councillors agreed they would instruct the council’s solicitor to draft the by-law with fines as high as £500 for feeding the birds.
The by-law would only be actionable in the council-owned section of the square, which accounts for approximately 60 percent of the area. Application of a by-law for the entire square is subject to agreement with the Stormont Department for Infrastructure.
A similar by-law exists for Trafalgar Square, by the Greater London Authority, which states “No person other than a person acting at the direction of the Mayor shall within the Square– (a) feed any bird (which shall include dropping or casting feeding stuff for birds); or (b) distribute any feeding stuff for birds”.
At the full council meeting this week, a council officer said: “There are things that have already been considered, and continue to be considered, around the by-laws for example, and education. Those things will take a bit more time.
“Basically anything we can do that is not a lethal remedy, we will endeavour to implement whenever we can.”
He said there was culling in the old Ards Borough Council, and added: “This does obviously reduce the numbers, but they do build back up again over time.”
UUP Councillor Richard Smart said: “One of the discussions we have been having in the Town Steering Group is around ownership of land, because that has a particular impetus in terms of our by-laws and how we can impose them. It is something we need to make sure we take forward in that discussion, because it is going to be key in getting out that clear message to the public that we shouldn’t be feeding the pigeons in that area.”
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