Back in the eighties, pigeon population had overgrown in Abu Dhabi as much as they have these days. The government decided to give them food with tranquilizers, picked up the sleeping pigeons and shipped them off somewhere else! Pigeons in cities are considered pests, and environmentalists urge people not to get them uesd to being fed, because they will not be able to survive on their own. Their droppings also carry hazards and disease.
People place food for them on window sills on pavements, causing the buildings and below pavements to become overridden with droppings. If anyone cares, a law could be passed forbidding people to feed them, in the same way the ‘City Image Monitoring’ goes round fining people wet the streets when they’re cleaning the cars because it’s aesthetically unpleasing! More stringent laws on cleaning buildings and pavements by real estate could be passed: why are only the buildings and the pavement on the Corniche the only clean ones. does the municipality just check that facade and leave eveything else? 100 meters away from the shiny corniche, on Khalifa street, you’re back into what looks like a neglected unclean third world city.
