Florida Community Overrun With Peacocks Plans To Give the Birds Vasectomies

A Miami neighborhood overrun with peacocks plans to give the birds vasectomies to limit their population from growing after the peafowls have reportedly been creating messes on residents' driveways and scratching their houses.

The vasectomies are part of a pilot program that Pinecrest, a Miami-Dade County suburban village where nearly 18,000 people live, will launch in around a month, according to CBS News.

Miami-Dade County Commissioner Raquel Regaldo said if the pilot program works in Pinecrest, it could be rolled out to other communities like South Miami and Coral Gables.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) said that peacocks "can exhibit nuisance behaviors when their numbers multiply or when they are being fed by people." Live traps can be used to remove "nuisance wildlife" in some parts of the Sunshine State, but state rules prohibit capturing and releasing non-native species into the wild.

Miami-Dade County banned killing or capturing peacocks in 2001 when their population was smaller but allowed residents to remove them from their property without harming them. However, as the birds started damaging people's properties more often recently, the County Commission began considering municipal governments' "peafowl mitigation plans," including Pinecrest's vasectomy plan, which the county approved last month.

The non-native peacocks in Pinecrest were originally living in Coconut Grove and began traveling south to Pinecrest when the neighborhood was being renovated, local officials suspect, according to The New York Times.

Many of the trees in Coconut Grove were destroyed as old cottages were being reconstructed into modern homes, forcing the peacocks to migrate to Pinecrest, where greenery is abundant.

According to an estimate by researchers from Florida International University, between 650 and 1,500, peacocks were living in Coconut Grove.

In Pinecrest, the peacocks seemed to be a persistent source of chaos to those living in the neighborhood. The birds pecked cars, scratched house roofs, and would wake residents up before dawn.

One resident, Gerald Greenberg, who has seven peacocks living in an oak tree in his front yard, wants to "do something" about the peafowl, but said that he "certainly wouldn't want to kill them."

"Peacocks are bona fide polygamists," said Don Harris, the veterinarian who will perform the peacock vasectomies in Pinecrest, according to The New York Times. "We're going to catch one peacock and probably stop seven females from reproducing. It's going to have an exponential benefit."