As some of you may know last month I've finished my first charity project collecting $200 for orphan children. Now I'm starting the project no.2 - where you can feed pigeons with the click of a button. http://www.webmasters4charity.org Please support this project by posting logos on your website. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor let me know via PM.
There are a lot of good charity and environmental works one could work on, feeding pigeons is not one of them. Pigeons are not a threatened or endangered species and in fact are so over populated in some places that they are a nuisance and health hazard much like rats. As pigeons are not negatively impacted by human intrusion and they actually thrive in cities where they have few to no natural enemies, feeding pigeons only helps to further exasperate their overpopulation. Rather than spending time and money "helping" to feed an animal that needs no help, that time and money could be better spent helping animals that really do need help or helping people that really need help.
I appreciate your comments. But I thought about this before you read this. Of course this won't change the world. But it may change some people's point of view. It doesn't matter who you help. It's easy to criticize. It doesn't matter if you help a child, a dog or a pigeon. If everyone in this world would help someone/somebody this would be enough. I hope you get the point now. And btw, don't tell me pigeons don't get hungry - because they do a lot - especially in winter time - Im sure lots of webmasters would love to feed them but they don't have time because thay sit at the computer - so why not feed them via one click? The gesture is important. If my message would encourage people to do another campaign (instead of criticize) where to help children/dogs/cats or whatever this would be more than enough.
Of course some pigeons go hungry in the winter. This is why it is called overpopulation. We have killed/driven off their natural predators that helped keep the pigeon population in balance and thus reduce starvation. Feeding an overpopulated and starving population of pigeons does nothing more than exasperate a problem and weaken the species by allowing individuals of that species to survive that wouldn't be able to survive in any other way. Starvation is a harsh, but necessary method nature uses to reestablish balance when other methods have been removed. By feeding pigeons and removing starvation from nature's toolbox, it could actually have a more devastating effect on the species at large because the population will continue to mushroom, and eventually nature will employ the next tool for population control which is disease. Disease can spread very rapidly through severely overpopulated populations resulting in a very dramatic die off of a species and actually allow a disease to hop from one species to the next causing mass die off's of other species as well. Bird flu is an example of a disease that would thrive under such over populations and it can jump from birds to humans. When looking at what is kind and noble with wild animals (and pigeons are wild animals) one must look at what is good for the entire species, not what is kind to individuals of a species. As they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Encouraging people to do good deeds is not enough, people must also be encouraged to do deeds that actually help and don't cause more harm. I applaud the desire to do good deeds, I'm only encouraging people to really look at if the deeds they are doing do good or cause harm.
my hat is off to you Bluemouse2. true, pigeons arent the most important animals to humans but at least you are doing something for another living creature. keep doing what you are doing. it is easy to criticise what you are doing but at least you are doing something. you are a angel among insects.
i fed 1 cup of grain and tomorow another and the next day another and so on and so forth. oh and how will the food be given out to the pigeons and who will be doing it???
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when an important amount of food is collected I'll go in the park/town center and feed the pigeons by myself
"Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. " i think you have problems with your server
there are always plenty of ideas - anyway I will stick on this one for now - I hope this will stimulate other people to start their own projects too