NLV pigeon policeman inspires reality TV show

By Joe Schoenmann

Monday, June 28, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Nephi Oliva’s controversial pigeon sanctuary in North Las Vegas drew so much media attention last year that he is set to become the star of his own reality TV show, “The Pigeon Police.”

“The show is going to be extremely controversial, but we are poised and ready for a battle with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals),” Oliva says.

Although Oliva saves 97 percent of all the pigeons he captures as the owner of Nevada Pigeon Control, he kills the remainder. A brief video of the new show’s first episode shows him gearing up, à la Rambo, then shooting a pigeon.

Despite that scene, the 37-year-old says he does all he can to keep the birds alive when he’s contracted to remove them from an area. He has even moved his pigeon sanctuary out of North Las Vegas after city officials deemed it illegal, then wanted him to kill most of his birds after 72 hours of captivity. His new sanctuary is in Clark County, but he’s keeping the location a secret, he says, because people climbed over walls to try to free the birds at his previous location.

Oliva is a massive guy, befitting of someone who spent five years as a bounty hunter. He can curse like a bounty hunter might be expected to. He’s an emotional guy, as witnessed in one scene from his show where he throws official paperwork back at a North Las Vegas official and tells him where he can put it.

When you get him talking about animals, when he recalls the “animal triage” center he set up in his home as a kid, and how his mom beat him whenever one of his pets — snakes, rats, mice, a pelican, a possum — got loose in the house, his voice softens.

“What dissuaded me from becoming a veterinarian was you had to deal with saying goodbye so often to the animals, and it was really hard on me,” he says. “But if you’re an animal lover, you have to come to terms with the fact that you’re going to outlive them.”

The germ for the reality show came partly from Oliva’s own antics. To make fun of North Las Vegas officials, he and his 11 employees started making videos of themselves doing things like pushing a pigeon through a city official’s doggy door.

“And it worked, because it generated a lot more interest in our issue,” he says. “And it kept evolving, eventually leading us to a production company. They’ve filmed the pilot and a few Strip locations and we’re waiting to finalize which network is going to make the best offer.”

Visually, the show will have one of the nation’s most interesting backdrops, because Nevada Pigeon Control works with about 30 casinos, many of them on the Strip, he says.

Oliva has a unique relationship with some casinos because within the past month, casinos have been able to apply for grants from a nonprofit group that Oliva established using donations that came in from across the country because of the attention gained from his fight with North Las Vegas City Hall. His nonprofit organization, the American Society for the Protection and Control of Pigeons, helps cover the cost of initial pigeon control, which is much higher than follow-up maintenance. “That’s because when we clear every pigeon off a property, that’s very labor intensive.”

Although casinos are often viewed as places licensed to print money, they are offered the grants because “right now budgets are tight,” Oliva says. His company will also be there in the months after the first capture to do monthly maintenance.

His long-term goal is to get local government to create a small tax on trash collection to fund pigeon control. He uses this dream to lash out at PETA, an organization he believes “creates as much harm to animals as they are doing good.”

“When you have an antagonistic strategy, you’re not going to change people’s ideas,” he says.

“I never saw myself doing this. It’s just the way callings work,” he says. “You find yourself in a position like Russell Crowe in ‘Gladiator.’ He didn’t want to be emperor, he just happened to be the best person for the job. That’s where character comes in, and if you have the ability to make a difference, you go with it.”

Lights, camera, PIGEONS!