February 26, 1997
His Holiness Pope John Paul II
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City
Europe
Your Holiness:
Tom Ridge, Governor of the state of Pennsylvania, will be in Rome next week to promote his state as a destination for Italian tourists. American newspapers have reported that during this visit he will be granted an audience with Your Holiness.
Pennsylvania is one of only a handful of states in the U.S. which hosts a singular form of animal cruelty known as "live pigeon shoots." In these spectacles, live pigeons are placed in small boxes (one bird per box) called "traps." Eighteen meters from the box stands a hunter with a shotgun. When the hunter yells "Pull," a spring mechanism propels the bird one meter into the air, and the hunter shoots the bird. As many as 6,000 pigeons are used in a single day's shooting. Last year, at the largest of these shoots, investigators documented that only 14% of the birds are killed immediately, another 9% escape unharmed, and the remaining 77% are wounded. Wounded pigeons who escape from the area face an agonizing death from exsanguination, infection, or starvation. Wounded birds who fall in the shooting area are retrieved by young children known as "trapper boys," who kill them by ripping the birds' heads off with their bare hands or slamming them against the side of a large metal container. I will repeat, since it is hard to believe if you have not seen it with your own eyes: YOUNG CHILDREN ARE TAUGHT TO KILL THE INJURED BIRDS BY TEARING OFF THE BIRDS' HEADS WITH THEIR BARE HANDS.
Numerous Pennsylvania newspapers, including the Philadelphia Daily News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and, in the state capital, the Harrisburg Patriot-News, have called for an end to live pigeon shoots. From all over the country, Americans have called and written to tell Governor Ridge that they will not visit Pennsylvania as long as the pigeon shoots continue. Many of Hollywood's leading producers, directors, and actors have announced that they will not shoot films in Pennsylvania while Pennsylvania permits the shooting of pigeons.
In spite of this outpouring of humane public sentiment, Governor Ridge refuses to support proposed legislation which would make these atrocities illegal in his state.
I urge Your Holiness to defend these most defenseless of God's creatures by declining to grant Governor Ridge an audience until he agrees to support legislation to ban live pigeon shoots. Or, in the alternative, I call upon Your Holiness to express to Governor Ridge the importance of kindness and compassion toward all of God's sentient creation, including the pigeons that he permits to be so cruelly tortured.
Sincerely yours,
Heidi Prescott
National Director