Birds of prey and pigeon-breeders. Current status of the problem
The conflict between pigeon-breeders and birds of prey is only a small part of a bigger problem of human attitude to environment. Today, we can hardly meet a person not knowing about the great importance of environmental protection. This is the base of balanced development of humanity.
That is why it’s outrageous to see in modern editions of the pigeon-breeders (particularly, the paper by V. Trigub in ‘Vestnik Golubevoda’ (Pigeon-breeder’s Herald), 2007, Iss. 7, 8) barbarian calls for exterminating raptors by all possible means as if they irretrievably harmed the pigeon-breeding. Knowledge of birds of prey is surprisingly poor among the pigeon-breeders. Such publications by them demonstrate that in spite of being excellent experts in pigeons their knowledge of other birds, raptors in particular, is scanty, they do not differentiate them and have low awareness of their ecology.
The papers of such kind brought about thoughts about a role of humanity in the fortune of nature. We think there is a necessity to search for weighed solution of this problem taking into consideration both interests of the pigeon-breeders and needs of birds of prey. Moreover, the pigeon-breeders already have solid experience in reducing loss caused by raptors (A.D. Mikheev, ‘Vestnik Golubevoda’, 2007, Iss. 8; Patoka 1995; Aksenov, Timoshevsky 1994; Chebanov 1997 et al.).
These materials prepared by us open a series of papers dedicated to this topic. We invite all people interested in this problem to discuss relations between the pigeon-breeding and birds of prey at our website pages.
Maxim Gavrilyuk