Integrated management of bird pests in the urban habitat: Lessons from the study of
Feral pigeons and Monk parakeets
Senar, Juan Carlos
Natural History Museum of Barcelona
Montalvo, Tomas; Pascual, Jordi; Carrillo, Jose
The urban habitat is a quite recent ecosystem, with very special characteristics.
Nevertheless, several species have become nicely adapted, to the extreme of
becoming persistent pests. Two outstanding examples, which we review in this paper,
are the Feral pigeon and the Monk parakeet, which exemplify a native and an exotic
birds species. We analyse methods for censuring them in the urban habitat, with
special emphasis on detectability, home-range and habitat use. We focus then on the
limiting factors which may regulate each population. We analyse patterns of
distribution of both species in Barcelona, showing that both species are more
abundant in neighbourhoods with a high percentage of old people (which provide
them food). Pigeons are also more abundant in areas with old buildings, which provide
holes to nest, and parakeets in areas with abundant trees, which also provide nesting
areas. We provide data on experiments in Barcelona, where we reduced in some areas
Feral population size by 40% by reducing food availability by public information. We
also provide population dynamics models from studies of capture/recapture in Monk
parakeets which show that removing individuals is twice more effective than reducing
reproductive success. Overall, data shows that reducing population size of urban avian
pests is possible, but needs from integrated management efforts.