If birds such as magpies or crows touch power lines or build nests, a power outage may occur. KEPCO is killing 200,000 magpies every year to reduce such damage, but the number of cases of bird blackouts is increasing.
This is reporter Ha Hye-bin.
[Reporter]
Dozens of dead magpies are lined up.
At the request of KEPCO, gunners belonging안전놀이터 to a private association killed all of them.
If birds such as crows or magpies touch electrical wires or build nests with metal items such as iron hangers in their teeth, a power outage may occur.
KEPCO is killing magpies by paying 6,000 won per animal to a private association to reduce such damage.
A total of 1.28 million animals have died over the past five years, and the cost is around 1.5 billion won each year.
In fact, the birds that can be legally captured are limited to ‘magpies that cause damage to power facilities.’
However, clear instructions are not given to field gunners on which magpies they can kill.
[Yang Hyang-ja/Korea Hope Representative: There is no way to know whether it is a magpie causing a power outage or an innocent magpie. Isn’t this indiscriminate killing?]
Also, it is not enough to keep up with the increasing number of magpies.
Although more than 200,000 magpies were caught every year, bird blackout incidents increased nearly four-fold compared to 2018 and last year.
The risk of safety accidents has also increased, and in fact, in March of this year, in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, an air gun that was intended to be fired at a magpie misfired, hitting a passerby in the chin.
[Catchers belonging to private associations: There are many cases where gunners are in trouble. Most telephone poles are next to the house. It’s really hard to shoot. Is there a person in the world who deliberately uses abusive language to kill people because they like it? ]
Experts advised that we should consider more effective and eco-friendly measures, such as emitting radio waves that birds dislike.
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