MELFORT — Melfort council has rejected changing their livestock bylaw to allow residents to keep racing pigeons within city limits.
Back in November, Ken King, vice-president of the Canadian Racing Pigeon Union, as well as Melfort resident Marlon Belista, approached council, requesting that they change the bylaw to allow the birds.
Belista, who has been raising racing pigeons in the city for three years, received a letter from the city in August that a complaint had been lodged and he would have to move them outside city limits. King said the Union mistakenly told him that he would be able to raise pigeons in the city at the time, after looking into the city’s animal control bylaw rather than the livestock bylaw that bans the birds.
Councillor Brian Enge, said a discussion was held by the community services committee, which ultimately came to the conclusion that the bylaw should remain unchanged. The decision was presented to council during their regular meeting on Feb. 14.
“That was kind of a tough one because for some people that’s maybe a mental break, that’s their passion – their hobby. That’s where it is difficult making these decisions in these cases,” Enge said.
“I talked to a lot of people on a daily basis, semi-pitching for the pigeons to see how people would feel if that was your neighbour, your backyard.”
Enge said he spoke to over 80 residents, with about 4 out of 5 of them responding negatively to the idea.
“My pitch to people was I have morning doves that come to my neighbours tree all summer long, I love sitting on my back deck having that cooing come my way. That was my understanding of how these pigeons are because they are kept in their coups,” he said.
“The majority of comments unfortunately grouped racing pigeons with free range pigeons, the regular pigeons that are more of a nuisance to the community than anything.”
Enge said in the case of democracy, not everybody wins but he hopes the racers will be able to continue participating in the sport.
He compared the result to a 2015 incident where there was a pet pig within city limits and a request for the bylaw to change to accommodate it.
“The owners of Abraham, that was the pig’s name, did move to another community. The bylaws were never changed.”
