Wildlife conflicts in the cities: How a mediation structure can help

In the context of growing urbanization, the importance of wild nature in towns is more and more acknowledge both for direct ecosystem services and in order to reduce the disconnection between urban citizens and nature. However, getting nature on the long term in cities depends on the way conflicts with urban wildlife could be solved.

Feral urban pigeon Columba livia is a good example of wildlife-related conflicts among stakeholders. Pigeon management is included in public policies, but without any guidelines or scientific evidence steering management.

Many local governments decided to manage pigeons through dovecotes, aiming at concentrating pigeons in a particular place by feeding them and at controlling their reproduction.

We studied the role of these dovecotes, with two complementary questions: (i) Do they modify the population dynamic of pigeons? (ii) Are they able to change human perceptions on urban pigeon, and do they participate to reconciliation between human and nature in cities?

We individually surveyed pigeons living in an experimental dovecote in Fontenay-sous-Bois (near Paris, France), and showed that pigeons are very faithful to this place, even without breeding in it. In parallel, we studied the status of the pigeon in social representations of citizens. We found that this species hardly get a well-defined place in the town. Dovecotes could be the only way to allow people changing their representation on this species.

These first results of an interdisciplinary project on urban pigeons are encouraging for future studies on the sustainable place of wildlife in the cities.