Limburg an der Lahn, in the western German state of Hesse, has just voted to exterminate its 700-strong pigeon population.
A referendum was held on 9 June - the same day as the country’s EU electiiom - after the city council’s decision to kill the birds in November 2023 proved controversial.
Just over 53 per cent of the residents who voted on Sunday approved the killing of the pigeons, Der Spiegel reports, with a total of 7,530 ‘yes’ votes cast.
“Today’s result was unpredictable for us. The citizens have made use of their right and decided that the animals should be reduced by a falconer," mayor Marius Hahn (SPD) told the German news site.
This was the method initially proposed by the council last year, and the question put to voters was simply whether the decision should stand or not.
More precisely, the falconer will lure the birds into a trap, hit them over the head with a wooden stick to stun them, and then break their necks.
Animal rights’ campaigners were horrified when the plan was announced. “We live in 2023, it can’t be that we kill animals just because they annoy us, or they’re a nuisance. That’s not acceptable,” Limburg city pigeon project manager Tanya Muller told the UK’s Sky News last year.
The cull is set to be carried out over the next two years.
Fuck them.
Welcome to Germany. This is the kind of dumb pointless shit that our local governments spend their time and our money concerning themselves with.
Also the EU wants to start allowing people to kill wolves en masse again.
I don’t have particularly strong feelings on these issues, i just think it’s idiotic wasting government resources on what is a clearly sisyphean task in the case of the pigeons.
the pigeon question is important ok? they deserve their 6 figure salary (prob undershoot it) to resolve these important theoretical questions.