Pigeon Plague Our Cities

In the opinion piece ‘Pigeon plague in our cities’ Jo Bonella from the city newspaper argues that pigeons are over populating in Melbourne and are posing a health concern to residents and to themselves. In a blaming tone- she blames humans for feeding the pigeons too much. The author tries to persuade the readers using a series of techniques. The writer asserts that there is an over population of pigeons both in Perth and Melbourne. She uses figures that “there are over 60 000 pigeons in the city”. Those figures add weight to her argument and may shock readers to see the seriousness of this problem and hence stop feeding them. To further persuade readers the writer uses loaded language referring the pigeons as “feral” to scare the readers that they are wild and dangerous creatures and are a huge pest to our community. Colourful language was used to support her argument that pigeons are a health risk. She reinforced that the “large amount of pigeon droppings are clogging gutters and rainwater pipes” and that pedestrians are stumbling and slithering across the footpaths because of the pigeon mess”. This will create an image in the readers and also create a sense of fear as citizens will associate pigeons with danger because of slipping on their droppings and also will associate them with more household maintenance as their home gutters will need to be cleaned more often. The writer talks about a radio talkback program saying that ‘the simple solution to the pigeon plague the city. Trap and destroy them before they ruin our city. Every farmer knows the answer. Kill or cull these flying rats before they do real damage to our cities.’ But the writer is against the idea and says ‘it is no real answer to the pigeon problem.’ This shows that the writer is showing that he is not a bad person by doing that the audience would consider to listen to him. The writer also had an expert from the Eminent Swiss biologist to tell that we are over feeding them; this