Belgium's pastoral pastime of pigeon racing faces high anxiety over crime wave

RANST, Belgium — 

Belgium's erstwhile pastoral pastime of pigeon racing has travel to this: Drones swoop implicit lofts wherever invaluable birds are housed to look for information weaknesses, laser sensors acceptable disconnected alarms astatine nighttime and cameras linked unrecorded to mobile apps support imaginable thieves astatine bay — 24/7.

That's what happens erstwhile the fast-flying fowl — which successful a bygone epoch were, astatine best, the toast of section bars — person turned into invaluable commodities. The astir costly vertebrate to travel retired of the apical pigeon-racing federation successful the satellite fetched 1.6 cardinal euros ($1.65 million) a fewer years ago.

No wonderment the athletics is grappling with an unprecedented question of unsolved pigeon pilfering that has deed respective of the champion birds successful the business.

This wintertime play is "extreme," Pascal Bodengien, the caput of the Belgian Pigeon Racing Federation, told The Associated Press. "Not a week goes by without a theft somewhere."

In 1 loft, an estimated 100,000 euros ($102,900) worthy of pigeons were stolen past week. Overall, nary arrests person been made. Prices per bird, said Bodengien, "can alteration from 1,000 to 100,000 euros ... and that is what they are after."

Exact statistic connected losses are often not disposable due to the fact that the reporting and constabulary investigations are not centralized.

The affectional nonaccomplishment often weighs heaviest of all. The athletics involves regular care, implicit decades, and the rustling of feathers combined with the tranquil cooing often gives breeders a haven of bid successful their different bustling lives on with a measurement of pridefulness if their birds are winners.

Frans Bungeneers is simply a breeder of champions. He started astatine property 8 and is inactive going beardown successful his 60s. His beingness got 1 of its biggest jolts successful November 2016 erstwhile thieves broke into his plot shed and took distant conscionable astir each his apical pigeons successful a heist of immoderate 60 overall.

"It was specified an unthinkable stroke for me. I tin archer you honestly, I cried similar a small lad due to the fact that my life's enactment was wholly destroyed," Bungeneers said extracurricular his loft wherever helium had to restart his breeding and racing astir from scratch. "I was — I was broken," helium said. "If you person those successes and those birds are past taken away. You cognize that it takes years."

He ne'er got his birds back, adjacent though the thieves were caught successful Romania and convicted successful Belgium. He ne'er saw the 400,000 euros ($410,000) successful damages helium was awarded due to the fact that the criminals were ruled insolvent. It makes this winter's drawstring of high-profile theft each the much poignant since helium knows what it means to each of the owners.

For pigeons taken successful a heist, their racing careers are over. Without due documentation, 1 cannot get distant with winning a large contention and not beryllium double- and triple-checked. That doorway is closed to thieves. The birds cannot beryllium taken to auction, wherever prices for apical birds regularly veer into the 5 figures and sometimes into six figures.

"The lone enactment unfastened to them is breeding. They cannot instrumentality it immoderate place, they cannot spell to China, truthful we fishy that they are going to the Eastern Bloc countries," arsenic was the lawsuit with Bungeneers' birds, said Bodengien. Still, with nary wide pb retired there, isolated from immoderate grainy infrared video and different sketchy information, "no 1 truly has an wide presumption connected it."

Bungeneers, who was a constabulary serviceman until his status past year, decries the deficiency of overall, associated investigations and the information that often the pricy pigeons are seen successful the aforesaid airy arsenic runaway poultry and person the aforesaid level of investigation. He said it was similar comparing a workplace pony to a champion thoroughbred.

"I retrieve a workfellow of excavation who went into the prosecutor's bureau and the magistrate said: 'gentlemen, what are we going to do? Start prosecuting the theft of chickens, rabbits and pigeons?'"

So now, the pigeon-racing federation is informing its members to beryllium other cautious — to the constituent of not talking to strangers astir their hobby.

"If you spot that thing is happening astir the location oregon astir the coops, oregon spot cars that don't truly beryllium there, instantly enactment down the licence plate, instrumentality photos, and perchance telephone the police," said Bodengien. "It is truly a telephone that we request to bash thing astir this."

But for Bungeneers that is besides a motion that a mode of beingness is being lost. Instead of the bliss of watching their birds swoop overhead, owners person to ticker warily implicit their enarthrosis to spot if idiosyncratic is adjacent the loft.

"Cameras, sensors, alarms. All the time, erstwhile you spell determination you person to look astatine your app to cheque the cameras," helium said. "If determination is an alarm, oregon sometimes the alarm detection goes disconnected and you spell cheque the sheds. And that gives you turmoil."

"You person to put thousands of euros successful your ain hobby to support imaginable thieves away," helium added. "For galore people, that is excessively overmuch and they driblet out."