Tag Archives: pigeon

“It Was Raining Pigeons”: Millions Die in Taiwan Sea Races

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https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=5467

More than a million homing pigeons die every year during Taiwan’s seasonal pigeon races, grueling sets of seven races over open ocean from ever-increasing distances. Young birds—not even a year old—are shipped out to sea, released in the middle of the ocean and forced to fly back home even in the midst of typhoon-strength winds. Most often, less than 1 percent of these highly intelligent birds complete each seven-race series; many drown from exhaustion, perish in the storms, or are killed afterward for being too slow.

 

PETA investigators went undercover at the largest pigeon-racing club in southern Taiwan from June to October 2013. They infiltrated this secretive industry, obtaining access to racing lofts, to “shipping night” (when the birds are registered and put in cargo crates), and even to a ship from which the pigeons were released. Investigators recorded officials and participants as they admitted to the millions of dollars in illegal bets and the massive losses of birds in this ruthless “sport.”

pigeon
Click here to see more pigeon-racing images. 

Top racers and high-ranking club officials admitted to deadly conditions for the birds, who fly with untreated injuries, without enough rest between races, and through heavy rainstorms. PETA investigators captured video of a race in which tens of thousands of birds disappeared in a matter of hours and were presumed to have drowned. Even birds who survive these extreme conditions may be killed or discarded by their owners if they do not make the qualifying time for the next race in the series. Pigeons are smart, gentle, and loyal birds. They bond for life and can live more than 20 years. Yet almost all of the birds who begin their lives as racing pigeons in Taiwan perish in their first year of life.

“It was raining pigeons—literally. I’ve never seen such a scene. Every one of them crashed onto the boat. … Some crashed into the ocean. … About one hour after the pigeon rain, you could see the whole surface of the ocean filled with dead pigeons.”
—Taiwanese fishing boat captain

Money—not just entry fees, but vast illegal wagers—fuels the multibillion-dollar pigeon-racing industry in Taiwan. Wealthy racers pay upwards of $100,000 for imported breeder birds, and top flyers admitted to making millions on a single race. “Prizes” such as refrigerators are listed on gambling sheets as a cover for the cash bets that are the main draw for these events. Racers boasted that government law enforcement “can’t catch us.” The chance to win staggering sums leads to extortion, drugging of birds, the kidnapping of birds for ransom, and the use of rigorous anti-cheating systems that involve RFID tags, multiple stamps on birds’ wings for identity, covering their leg ring numbers, and meticulously comparing photographs of the birds’ feathers.

An international web of commerce supports Taiwanese pigeon racing: Breeder birds are bought and sold for tens of thousands of dollars from U.S. and international dealers, then kept as “prisoners,” constantly reproducing while their offspring are serially exterminated in race after race. A prominent U.S. racer and breeder who is currently facing felony charges as a result of a previous PETA undercover investigation is involved in selling birds to Taiwan. Bieche Lofts, another top U.S. breeder, recently sold a prize-winning bird to a Taiwanese racer for an undisclosed price. An Idaho company called Dynamite is even producing a specialized pigeon feed for the Taiwanese pigeon-racing market. Millions of dollars fly in this business, but for the pigeons it’s always a losing bet.

You can add your voice to protest the cruel use of pigeons for gambling by asking Wang Cho-chiun, director-general of the National Police Agency, to investigate the cruelty and the billions of dollars in illegal bets and un-taxed winnings associated with pigeon racing in Taiwan.

Sign sample letter here: https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=5467

 

Victory: Ducks Unlimited 2,000 Bird Pigeon Shoot Cancelled

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We are pleased to announce that after receiving complaints about the event, and less than one day after we released this video about the issue, Ducks  Unlimited has cancelled the shoot! 
Here is the email we just received from Ducks Unlimited:
  Dale Hall forwarded me your email regarding the pigeon shoot and asked that I respond to you directly. Earlier  today, several Ducks Unlimited members contacted headquarters staff to make us aware that one of our committees was  planning to hold a pigeon shoot as part of a DU event. We have policies in place holding our staff and local  volunteers to high ethical and moral standards, and do not condone wanton waste of wildlife or other animals. To  avoid the potential for wanton waste, the event committee has decided to change the live pigeon event to a sporting  clays shoot.
   Sincerely,
Matt
Matt Coffey     Senior Communications Specialist     DUCKS UNLIMITED
  This is an astounding turn of events; for 20 years Ducks Unlimited has been holding these “phigeon  shoots,” where innocent pigeons have sharp pheasant tail feathers forced into their backs, and yet within one  day, and working together, we all were able to stop this vicious shoot.
This is the power of your activism at work – everyone who called and spoke out helped save not only 2,000 pigeons  whose horrific deaths were just two days away, but perhaps tens of thousands of pigeons in the years to come.
  We also want to thank Ducks Unlimited for recognizing that this was an important issue and taking quick action to  stop this atrocity from happening again.
If you’d like to thank them for stopping the pigeon shoot, please send a polite email to Dale Hall, CEO of Ducks Unlimited. DHall@ducks.org
In the following picture, you will see three birds that SHARK rescued at live pigeon shoots. We know, from having held these birds, and many more like them, that each of them is an individual living being who felt joy and suffering.
Thank you for helping us save 2,000 individual living beings just like these three.

pigeons
        Kindest Regards,                 Steve Hindi and Your SHARK Team    
    “Kindness and compassion towards all living beings is a mark of a civilized society. Racism, economic    deprival, dog fighting and cock fighting, bullfighting and rodeos are all cut from the same fabric:    violence. Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well    ourselves.” – Cesar Chavez, civil rights and labor leader, founder of the United Farm Workers

Visit SHARK: www.sharkonline.org

Hunter Does a Commendable Thing: Chooses Death

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By now you’ve probably heard about the hunter from Indiana who ended up permanently paralyzed and on a ventilator after falling from a tree. While it’s always good news to know there’s one less armed animal-killer out there trying to gun-down the innocent, this is a case of an injured hunter—rendered essentially harmless to anyone but himself and his caregivers—choosing to do the right thing.

The miracles of modern medicine include morphine and other drugs that can spare a person from the unbearable pain which often accompanies such an injury. Yet, just as not every illness can be cured, there is a limit to how much spinal damage can be reversed. At times, the most humane resolution is to allow a suffering individual to peacefully pass, or even gently hasten the passing.

Despite the national obsession with health care these days, people rarely hear a word about the choices available to patients, or the fact that one can always refuse life-prolonging treatment (as long as they’re still able to communicate, or have previously expressed your wishes in writing). Kudos to the family of the hunter who must have known his wishes well enough to ask to bring him out of it and allow him to tell the staff at the hospital that he was definitely not interested in marking time in a rehab facility, hooked up to a ventilator.

For all its marvels, modern medicine is in a big way responsible for the rapidly worsening human overpopulation crisis. I don’t know if his decision was based in part on selflessness, but if more people were to choose no to be when by all intents and purposes they really aren’t alive anymore, the human population might start to level off and eventually not be quite such a burden on the planet.

I had an unwelcome opportunity to end the suffering of a mortally wounded band-tailed pigeon (a wild, forest-dwelling bird, native to the Western North America) who showed up at my birdfeeder with her lower bill shot completely off (probably by a dumbass neighbor kid who liked to shoot at everything that moved with his 22). The pigeon was unable to ever feed herself again, so I’m not sure if she returned to this familiar territory to somehow assuage her nagging hunger, or if she was hoping I could do something to help.

Like the paralyzed hunter whose only hope of living was via a feeding tube, there was no way this poor pigeon had any real chance of long term survival without some kind of major heroics. Since medical science has yet to invent a bionic bill for lowly birds, all I could do was shoot the poor thing to instantly put an end to her misery.

Band-tailed pigeon photo©Jim Robertson

Band-tailed pigeon photo©Jim Robertson