After more than a decade of incidents, legal action finally taken.
The authorities in Osaka’s Sumiyoshi Ward tried being lenient. Since over a decade ago, residents in the area around Abikocho and Nagai Stations on the JR Hanwa Line and Osaka Metro subway network had been complaining about a certain individual’s nocturnal activities. Repeatedly, this person would show up late at night on the streets outside the stations and…feed pigeons and crows.
Pigeons and crows aren’t exactly known for their clean, quiet lifestyles, and scattering a bunch of food for them resulted in massive congregations of the birds, whose cacophony of excited late-night cries and massive amounts of post-feeding poo became disruptive, disgusting nuisances for people living in the area. Finally, in April of 2024, under the provisions of Japan’s Animal Welfare Act, which allows mayors or governors to take necessary measures if the feeding of wild animals is having a detrimental effect on the local living environment, the city of Osaka issued an administrative order banning the feeding of pigeons and crows. Still, the bird-feeder persisted, and now Osaka Prefectural Police from the Sumiyoshi Precinct have filed charges against them. Under voluntary questioning, the suspect, a resident of Sumiyoshi Ward, admitted to violating the administrative order multiple times.
This might seem like a lot of commotion over someone feeding some birds, but as this video clip recorded outside Abikocho Station shows, the perpetrator wasn’t just scattering a few bread crumbs around, but tossing out entire loaves of bread.
Online reactions to criminal charges being filed have included:
“Wild birds don’t need any food handouts from people.”
“This was going way beyond some senior citizen feeding a couple birds in the park.”
“Looks like the person was just dumping out bread by the bagful.”
“They probably thought they were doing something good, so it was hard to stop.”
“They should take action like this against people who feed stray cats too.”
As pointed out in the comments, pigeons and crows living in urban areas tend to do just fine finding food on their own, so feeding them, especially on the scale seen in the video, can lead to overpopulation, which can then lead to demands to forcefully reduce the animals’ numbers. So while the feeder’s heart may have been in the right place in terms of wanting to do something nice for the birds, leaving them to take care of their meals on their own really is the better way to ensure peaceful cohabitation with humans.
Source: YTV, Yomiuri Shimbun, YouTube/ ABCテレビニュース
Top image: Pakutaso
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