Foreign Affairs

Theme Park Is Using Birds To Clean Up Litter

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A popular French theme park started using rook crows to pick up visitors’ litter, using the intelligent birds in an eco-friendly effort to maintain clean grounds.

Puy du Fou, a historical theme park in France’s western Vendée region, trained six rooks to clean up cigarette butts and trash visitors left behind, and they will begin working altogether Monday, the New York Post reported. The birds have an incentive, too — they get a treat after depositing trash in the correct box.

The park called using rooks as trash collectors a revolutionary idea, according to its website.

“Rooks are unfairly maligned, classed as a nuisance, but these birds will perform an eco-friendly deed and restore their image,” said Christophe Gaborit, the head of falconry at Puy du Fou, Reuters reported.

“The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean,” Nicolas de Villiers, the president of Puy du Fou, told Agence France-Presse.

Rooks are a member of the crow family and are known to be particularly intelligent. The birds “like to communicate with humans and establish a relationship through play,” de Villiers added.

Puy du Fou is the second most popular theme park in France after Disneyland Paris and receives more than 2 million visitors each year.