Three Cheers for Citizen Action!

This morning, with very little effort, a few of my neighbors and I finally put a stop – at least temporarily – to our city’s inane policy of vulture harassment. And all it took was a little networking on Facebook, a few e-mails, and a phone call or two. Well, and a few years of complaining.

My small riverside town in Southwest Virginia is home to one of the continent’s largest winter populations of vultures. My family is lucky enough to live about a block from their main roost, a grove of tall pines at the edge of our neighborhood.

In the evenings the mixed groups of black and turkey vultures come soaring in, “kettling” on the breeze before descending to the treetops for the night. (You can check them out on the viewer-controlled vulture cam set up by local biology professor Bob Sheehy.) In the morning, they rise to catch the early thermals, and spread out for miles in all directions, searching for food.

Food, of course, is dead animals. In the age of highways, there’s never a shortage of road kill, and “nature’s garbage disposals” provide free sanitation service, clearing roads and streets of carcasses that would otherwise rot and become potential disease spreaders. The vultures, with their featherless heads and self-cleansing antiseptic urine, are perfectly evolved to safely turn nasties into calories. But whether because of their diet or their appearance, these bird are more often maligned than appreciated.

This is certainly true in my town. Year after year city officials order the systematic harassment of this protected migratory bird, spending our tax money in a futile and short-sighted effort to evict our feathered neighbors. Year after year, we complain and request that they stop, but every year they start up anew.

In the city’s latest effort, an animal control officer pulls his truck up to the edge of the roost and blasts away into the trees with explosives. This happens on an apparently random schedule, but always first thing in the morning, and it never fails to scare the hell out of my family and my dog. I can’t imagine if we lived right next to the woods.

Why the harassment? Apparently there are complaints: small pets air-lifted by ravenous birds, decks drenched in defecation, vulture vomit, tar paper torn from an elementary school roof. Really? I’ve yet to see documented evidence of any real damage, and I’m suspicious that these complaints are more fantasy than fact. I’ve certainly seen none of it, and I live pretty close.

As for the birds, the blasting has little noticeable effect. The vultures, which disperse early in the morning anyway, are prematurely and unceremoniously evicted from the woods, but they never fail to return in the evening.

Last week, I’d finally had enough. After having the morning quiet shattered once again, I cranked out a column for our local online magazine (shout out to the New River Voice) spelling out why the practice needed to stop. Then last weekend we had a well attended city-sponsored Vulture Festival celebrating our avian neighbors. I thought that maybe at last they’d stop the senseless blasting.

But no. Early Tuesday morning – boom! – they were back at it. Again Thursday. Finally, when they went at it this morning, I emailed the new city manager. I posted my letter on Facebook, and at least two other neighbors followed suit. Within half an hour we all received identical email messages from the chief of police: “We are suspending the harassment of the vultures effective immediately as we study the issue further in an effort to meet the needs of all of the citizens.”

I can hardly believe it: After years of futility a little Facebook, a little email, and we have immediate results! Perhaps the new city manager is simply more receptive to our complaints. Maybe the police chief is tired of wasting his animal control officer’s time. Or possibly the years of voiced opposition finally had an effect. Whatever the reason, I’m glad.

So are the vultures.