Pigeon Shooting - Press Release

You will have seen from our previous article on Pigeon control where the then Minister did attempt to ban the control of pigeons during the months of June, July and August. After intense lobbying by the NARGC and the IFA and others she agreed to reconsider the position for this year. The Minister promised that their would be a follow up review early in the coming year on the matter.

When it was first announced there was a massive amount of disbelieve and anger among the farming and hunting community that such a decision could be contemplated without serious research and discussion with the relevant stakeholders.  So much so that both our offices were inundated with thousands of complaints and anger from both our members and non members alike.

We followed up on our campaign to ensure that crop protection could take place at this vital time of the year (when the cereal crops were at their most vulnerable from attack resulting in huge financial losses to the farming community) by carrying out our own research into the extent of the damage. We circulated data information sheets and forms to all clubs in Ireland for completion by clubs in their own areas. 

As the harvest has just about concluded for this year we ask members who took part in the survey to send their forms back in immediately as we need to collate all the data supplied and have it presented to the Minister for consideration. We are preparing this report along with the IFA. Our most recent meeting with the new Minister had this item on the agenda and there was a very detailed discussion around the whole way in which it was handled by the NPWS. The Minister agreed to revisit this topic early in the New Year.

It us now up to us to  do our part and finalise our report, while we have received a good number of replies to date we are sure many more are there waiting to be returned. Do not wait for our next meeting to do this , act now and send your report back in by post or email. For our part we will circulate the results of the survey as soon as we have all the data returned to us. We were asked many times when this was going ahead as to what we were going to do about it. Now it is your turn to do something about it. Over to you.