Birds at campus, do you like it or not ?

Hi pals,

The presence of some kowak birds (Nycticorax sp ?) along ganesha street in campus ITB at the begining when their number still small was unnoticed. But then when their number growing quickly, they started to cause some problems to ITB’s community. Their faeces spread bad odor, creating a mess on the street, leaves and branches of trees along the street. People working in ITB’s post office complain about bird’s faeces but they could do nothing, they just shutt down their office door and windows. What worries many people is that if the bird is infected with a fatal desease of avian flu, the desease may be transferred to human being.

One day some people shot the birds, but that action was critized through ‘suara pembaca’ in PR. The shooting of birds ws also blamed in ITB dosen’s mailing list. Some recomendation has been put forward to reduce kowak’s population in ITB campus, including the cutting of the trees, put some cans on a rope on trees branch, and when the rope is pulled it would produced noise that annoy the birds, and this hopefully could push the birds to leeave the trees along ganesha street. Kicking them out of ITB campus may not solve the problem in general because they may go to other place, we may just solve problem in ganesha by transfering it to other area. None of the abiove recommendation has been cariied out by ITB’s authority. They just leave the problem like that … probably untill there is a proof that  those birds are carrying fatal desease like avian flu.

Any comments how should ITB’s and Bandung’s community should face that problem ?

TfR
 

Hi GLS!
I would like to share similar story about bird’s problem with you.

The similar situation has also occurred in Yogya, especially in the area around Gadjah Mada University.
We have numerous white and grey beautiful birds thatcalled Kuntul Putih (Ardea alba) and Kuntul Abu(Ardea cinera), which always come around 4-5 pm and leave from the Univ around 6-7 in the morning, every day.

According to the history, the birds were originally come from Ambarukmo Palace Garden long …long time
ago. The garden as the habitat had conversed to be a big hotel and mall. The birds moved then. First, we
thought the birds have disturb us with the similar problem to the Kowak’s problem in ITB. Many efforts
have been treated by GMU to take them away from the campus. But its have never succeeded. Recently, we got a good strategy. Inside the botanical garden of the Fac of Biology,that pretty far from building and open street. We cut off some leaves and branches of some tall trees and left the tallest tree(s) in the center
of the garden. The birds noticed that, day by day gradually they moved from some trees inside the
Univ(everywhere)or from the top of some buildings into the tall trees in the garden. Now, before leave my
office I can see how beautiful there the garden with full of birds in the evening. Of course we care about
the Avian flu, but shot the birds is not the best way, we think. They need to be alive, too.

How about a nice Kowak’s garden inside/outside ITB? Is that imposible? Could you describe how’s the bird’s look like?

See you later!

endsemi