Why not just ship it back to the US? Wanting to protect Australian species is perfectly understandable but this isn't the only way to do so. Bureaucrats are terrible people.
Economics, I guess. I wonder how much it costs to ship a pigeon safely from Australia to Alabama. It's probably a few thousand dollarydoos.
Probably, but the sales price of racing pigeons can be in the tens of thousands or even higher. So it depends on whether this is an expensive pigeon...