Connecticut's United Illuminating Company, in concert with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, agreed to immediately cease their efforts to remove thousands of resident monk parrots from their nests by night and then kill the birds with carbon dioxide.
This senseless extermination made headlines around the globe and sparked angry protests from area residents, members of the animal protection community, and state and federal lawmakers against United Illuminating, a private company that distributes electricity to customers in portions of southern Connecticut.
In response to those protests, this week, United Illuminating officials told a Connecticut Superior Court judge that it has no further plans to capture monk parrots this year and have them euthanized. United Illuminating stated that they will only be dismantling nests from the poles where birds had already been removed.
Parrots in New England?
It may come as a surprise to many to learn that wild tropical parrots thrive in the United States and have done so for decades. Monk parrots (Myiopsitta monachus), also known as monk parakeets or quaker parrots, are native to South America and are believed to have been introduced to the Northeast in the late 1960s when a container of parrots, destined for the pet trade, broke open at New York's Kennedy Airport and allowed several birds to escape into the urban wilds.
Tropical or not, these hardy birds manage to survive harsh Northeastern winters and have since established flourishing wild populations in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. They have also proliferated in balmier Florida and Texas, as well as in parts of Illinois.
Oddly, monk parrots are the only parrot species that actually build nests. Pairs of parrots prefer to attach their nest to other existing nests, creating an "apartment building" of sorts. In the wild, these nests can be huge and quite heavy. The large nests may be the key to the success of monk parrots in cooler climes, since such close quarters generate heat and make for warm, dry shelters.
Monk parrots sometimes build their massive nests atop utility poles, causing many utility companies like United Illuminating to claim that the nests create a fire hazard or have the potential to cause power outages. While this may occasionally happen, the bottom line is that birds do not have to be killed to solve these problems. There are non-lethal long-lasting ways to deal with their nesting habits.
Some utility companies, including several in neighboring New York and New Jersey, routinely remove nesting material as soon as the parrots begin building. Eventually the birds give up and build their nests in nearby trees. There are also some non-lethal exclusion devices and repellents that have the potential to effectively eliminate utility poles as attractive nesting sites for the parrots. Utility poles provide excellent sites for monk parakeets to build their nests. Simply removing and killing parrots will not prevent other parrots from nesting on the poles in the future.
While United Illuminating has ceased killing birds, the battle on behalf of the monk parrots is far from over. To do its part, United Illuminating will need to develop, in concert with experts in the field of humane bird management, a comprehensive, long-term solution to the problem of monk parrots nesting on utility poles.
