'Fake' US leg band may get pigeon a reprieve found in Australia
A good pigeon that Australia declared a biosecurity risk gets a reprieve after a US bird organisation declared its identifying leg band was artificial.The band recommended the bird within a Melbourne backyard on Dec 26 was a racing pigeon that had still left the US state of Oregon, 13,000 kilometres away, 8 weeks earlier.On that basis, Australian authorities on Thursday stated they considered the bird a disease risk and planned to kill it. But Deone Roberts, sport development manager for the Oklahoma-established American Racing Pigeon Union, said on Fri the band was artificial. "
The band number belongs to a blue bar pigeon in america and that's not the bird pictured in Australia," she said. "The bird band in Australia is definitely counterfeit and not traceable," Roberts said. "It will be has a house in Australia rather than the US.""Somebody must seem at that band and then recognize that the bird isn't from the US. They don't need to destroy him," she added.
"Counterfeiting bird bands is happening a lot more," Roberts said. "People getting into the hobby unknowingly get that."Pigeon racing has seen a good resurgence in popularity, plus some birds have grown to be quite valuable. A Chinese pigeon racing fan put down a record value of just one 1.6 million euros ($1.9 million) in November for a Belgian-bred pigeon.
Acting Australian Primary Minister Michael McCormack explained he did not really know what the fate of the bird named Joe, after the US president-elect, would be. But there would be no mercy if the pigeon had been from the United States."If Joe has come in a way that has certainly not met our strict biosecurity actions, then misfortune Joe, either fly residence or face the results," McCormack told reporters.
But Martin Foley, health minister for Victoria state where Joe lives, called for the federal government to extra the bird."I would urge the Commonwealth's quarantine officials to show a little bit of compassion," Foley said."The bird with the original leg band had disappeared from a 560-kilometre (350-mile) competition in Oregon on Oct 29," Crooked River Problem owner Lucas Cramer said.
Lars Scott, a carer in Pigeon Rescue Melbourne, a bird welfare group, said pigeons with American leg bands weren't uncommon around the city. "A number of Melbourne breeders bought them on line and applied them because of their own record-keeping," Scott said.
Australian quarantine authorities are notoriously rigorous. In 2015, the federal government threatened to euthanize two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, once they were smuggled in to the nation by Hollywood celebrity Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard.Confronted with a 50-hour deadline to leave Australia, the pet dogs made it away in a chartered jet.
