Bangkok authorities backed down yesterday on their plan to move some 10,000 wild pigeons from Sanam Luang - the big field adjacent to the Grand Palace - to Ratchaburi following an outcry from locals.
Neti Tantimontri, president of the Friendship Association for Pigeon Racing, had tentatively offered to take the birds to an area with thousands of rai on Lat Phrao Soi 87, he said.
Many academics and animal rights advocates had criticised the city's "cruel" plan to move the birds away, so Theerachon said they would be raised in a closed farm, segregated by gender to prevent breeding, and taken care of until they died of natural causes.
They would not be shiftedand let free in other areas.
Experts from the pigeon association were working on the project to relocate the birds and they were well qualified as they handled the transport of 10,000 racing birds on a monthly basis.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration's plan to clear the pigeons from Sanam Luang was aimed at containing diseases they carried, such as encephalitis, which kills over 10 people a year.
The pigeons would be treated for parasites, fungi and mites before being sent to the closed farm.
However, he believed some of the birds would escape and hang around Sanam Luang after the project, so he urged people not to feed the birds.
The suggestion by academics to feed the pigeons a drug to sterilise them and stop them reproducing wouldn't solve the problem as the drug was expensive, he said.
Residents in Prachin Buri, which was an original destination for the Sanam Luang pigeons, had also objected to the plan.
Malisorn Chainongwa, 48, from Prachantakham district, said she didn't want the pigeons released there because she feared they might transmit avian diseases and have an impact on the environment.
She said an outbreak of bird-carried diseases could drive tourists away from the province's natural attractions.
