A Eureka Springs resident who has been complaining about vultures needs to take the initiative to rid them from his property before asking the city to intervene, an alderman said at Monday's City Council meeting.
Alderman James DeVito said it might be a city issue if several people in the neighborhood between Ridgeway and Linwood streets were complaining, but so far it's just one resident.
"We have one homeowner that has an issue and, to our knowledge, hasn't tried anything on his own to mitigate the situation," said DeVito. "I question whether it's the responsibility of the city at this point. ...
"... I've got a groundhog destroying my yard and undermining the foundation of my house. Should I call the city and say 'What are you going to do about the groundhog?'"
Mayor Robert "Butch" Berry said he would confer with the homeowner and report back to council.
Berry said he has seen hundreds of vultures in that neighborhood. Normally, migratory black vultures arrive by the thousands in Arkansas every September and October and stay until spring.
Berry said sonic cannons were used with some degree of success to chase vultures from the same neighborhood in 2007.
The person complaining about vultures wasn't at Monday's meeting. His name wasn't mentioned in the meeting, and he has requested anonymity, at least for the time being.
Berry said the man who complained had been turned down for a loan on his house because of vultures.
"I talked to the appraiser," Berry told the council. "The appraiser said the same thing. The appraiser said the roof is literally being eaten by the vultures, not to mention all the other ramifications that come from the birds sitting on your roof."
Mike Hoy said vultures sometimes "tear at shingles." Hoy is district supervisor for wildlife services in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. He's based in Almyra, near Stuttgart.
Hoy said it needs to be a citywide effort to get rid of the vultures. Otherwise, they'll just go from one neighborhood to another.
"If they want to live with them, that's fine, too," Hoy said in a telephone interview. He wasn't at Monday's meeting but did assist the city with the vulture problem in 2007.
Beth Withey, the only resident of the affected neighborhood who spoke at Monday's council meeting, said she and her husband bought a house there in 2011 knowing a vulture roost was nearby.
We "looked at this as an opportunity to study vultures and perhaps contribute to a naturalist habitat of the species," Withey told the council.
"We strongly oppose a 'vulture relocation plan' in any form," she said, referring to the phrase used on the council agenda.
Vultures are a protected species under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so they can't legally be killed without permission from the federal government.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers got a permit and had four vultures killed in June so they could rid them from Bull Shoals Dam, 87 miles east of Eureka Springs on the White River. Vultures have an aversion to dead of their own species, so hanging dead vultures near the dam deterred live vultures from roosting there, at least temporarily.
Metro on 09/30/2015