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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Birds roost in Grande town centre

by

20140209

Hun­dreds of dark-coloured birds, iden­ti­fied as Mar­tins, flock dai­ly to over­head elec­tri­cal lines in the heart of San­gre Grande.Though passers-by are al­ways left in awe at the sight of the birds, which look like dec­o­ra­tions on the elec­tri­cal lines, some ven­dors and busi­ness own­ers are up in arms with the feath­ered an­i­mals, say­ing they are a nui­sance and that they are cre­at­ing a health haz­ard.The San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is now pre­pared to pay $100,000 to re­move the birds, us­ing a method which in­volves noise.

But this is not sit­ting well with en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Stephen Broad­bridge, who said the pro­posed cost was "ridicu­lous."For al­most a year, the birds have been con­verg­ing on the elec­tri­cal lines at dusk, said chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ter­ry Ron­don. The birds would fly off at the crack of dawn the next day, he said.Be­low the lines are a clus­ter of busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing Roy­al Cas­tle, Sub­way and the San­gre Grande ven­dors' booths and mar­ket.

Ron­don said the birds' drop­pings had be­come a prob­lem, as every morn­ing the pave­ments had to be cleaned by a crew."It has been caus­ing a health haz­ard. Burgess­es and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty are com­plain­ing. The cor­po­ra­tion will be part­ner­ing with the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment to have this mat­ter re­solved," he said.Last Christ­mas, Ron­don said, they no­ticed the birds dis­ap­peared when scratch bombs and fire crack­ers were used. He said the cor­po­ra­tion in­tend­ed to use noise to scare the birds away.

Ron­don will­ing tospend the mon­ey

For the birds to be per­ma­nent­ly re­moved, Ron­don said, it would cost "in ex­cess of $100,000," since they had to deal care­ful­ly with the elec­tri­cal wires on which the birds gath­ered. He was not spe­cif­ic about what ex­act­ly would cost this much."Let me say, this would put the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion in debt. Mon­ey for me is not the prob­lem where peo­ple are con­cerned. That is how I look at it. We pass through all the hur­dles al­ready. That is why I am telling them to spend the mon­ey and do it the right way."

He said four ar­tif­i­cal owls were pre­vi­ous­ly placed on the elec­tri­cal wires, hop­ing this would scare the birds away: but it did not work. Met­al spikes had al­so been placed on the top of build­ings; these al­so failed.Ger­ard Charles was one of sev­er­al ven­dors on the East­ern Main Road who called for the birds to be de­stroyed."We to­tal­ly fed up," said Charles, who was busy ped­dling veg­eta­bles.Oth­er ven­dors agreed with Charles, say­ing the birds were dis­rupt­ing their sales and would of­ten "mess on their goods."

Ra­mona Ram­di­al, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment, on Thurs­day said the min­istry did give the cor­po­ra­tion tech­ni­cal ad­vice through the Forestry Di­vi­sion and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty.

Broad­bridge:The cost is ridicu­lous

Broad­bridge, own­er of Caribbean Dis­cov­ery Tours and a di­rec­tor of Pa­pa Bois Con­ser­va­tion, did not agree with Ron­don's ap­proach. Broad­bridge sug­gest­ed that mi­ni-wind­mills be used on the elec­tri­cal lines to chase the birds away.This, he said, would be less ex­pen­sive and more ef­fec­tive.Broad­bridge said he was will­ing to of­fer the cor­po­ra­tion ad­vice, but won­dered if they would take it."Or­gan­i­sa­tions like that would not lis­ten. I think the ex­perts' sug­ges­tions are ridicu­lous," he said.


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