Gulls in Towns

PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE WITH GULLS

Photograph by Terence Stubbings

The Problems Caused in south east coast towns by Herring and Lesser Black-backed Gulls are Primarily due to our Behaviour: The Birds are Simply Reacting to it.

We humans are creating food wastes in towns and attracting seabirds; at the same time we are increasingly intruding on their habitat, depriving them of nesting sites on cliffs. Governments are ordering Local Councils to increase house-building and encourage businesses to start up - more food wastes thrown away round fast food outlets or put into plastic rubbish sacks, no barrier to a sharp beak, eventually dumped in open landfill sites. More people, more roofs to nest on, more baby gulls. In their traditional nesting sites on cliffs, gull infant mortality is high. Urban gulls are now said to be producing chicks 20 times faster than those in the wild.

THE FACTS: The Lesser Black-backs breed only in ten or fewer sites in the world: Britain has a larger proportion of them than any other country. Over the past 25 years, nationally the numbers of Herring Gulls have dropped by 25 per cent and of Lesser Black-backed Gulls by half.

The south east coast regional picture is different:-

SOURCE: Mitchell, Dunn & Ratcliffe, “Seabird Populations of Britain and Ireland: Results of the Seabird 2000 Census,” (Poyser Monographs), pub. A. & C. Black, June 2004.

Seagulls and the Law

The 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act, Schedule 2 deals with wild birds including herring, lesser and greater black backed gulls, which may be killed if they are a danger to farming, air traffic or public health and safety. The prescribed policies are a “grey area.” The Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, DEFRA, administers the Act from its Bristol office through two different Sections whose precepts do not entirely coincide. The Section dealing with the Act reviews Schedule 2 every December in consultation with mainly English Nature but also the RSPB checking species numbers; those which show marked decline may be taken off the list. Apparently MPs are not notified of changes. People are allowed to protect their roofs from birds building nests but the means used are not checked to ensure there is no cruelty, however, the DEFRA Conservation of Species Section has regulations – see below.

For years Lesser Black-backed and particularly Herring Gulls have been nesting in towns in summer and hatching out chicks. In a few cases their devotion to their young makes them unreasonably aggressive towards people causing real distress and hardship. Minorities in some towns complain, that they are noisy, that they defecate on buildings and on the current, most sacred icon, cars, and bits of their nests may block drains.

Licences to Kill
DEFRA issues Special Licences to kill gulls to people who have particular problems.

From 1993, under a General Licence, members of the public have been authorised to “take” the 3 species of gulls listed above:-

1. provided they are “authorised persons”, i.e. owners or occupiers of the properties where the birds are;
2. or they may request Local Authorities, who are empowered to order culling on their own initiatives, to get rid of them;
3. the “authorised persons” then appoint agents – not necessarily qualified in any way – who under written authorisation from Local Authorities kill birds and nestlings (or they can even do the job themselves), the DEFRA Conservation of Species Section makes the sole proviso that they do so “quickly” and “humanely”, including dispatching birds caught in netting or other traps which are supposed to be checked every 24 hours, i.e. that is the maximum amount of time birds may be left to suffer.

These legal requirements are given on the website:- www.defra.gov.uk linked to the 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act.

The overall impression is that this legislation is confusing: there is no monitoring to see whether the 24-hour check is observed. Even if it is, the Save Our Seabirds Charitable Trust queries whether keeping a bird trapped on a roof in netting for up to 24 hours is “humane” and its life is certainly not ended “quickly”.

As with any law, the Police have a duty to enforce the Wildlife & Countryside Act. There are Wildlife Officers attached to local Police Forces. However, the Police have a great many serious offences to deal with and enforcement of the Act cannot have high priority when they are very stretched. Often responsibilities for the welfare of wildlife are combined with other duties and for them, too, it is a “grey area”.

DEFRA’a claim that its policy is the conservation of species is not borne out by the facts: the RSPB has questioned “the appropriateness of a general licence to kill for species of high conservation concern.”

Herring gulls are now on the “amber list” of species whose numbers are in serious decline.

Black-headed gulls, not natural scavengers, now too are coming into towns. They are not on Schedule 2 so it is unlawful to “take” them, but their numbers are dropping.

In any case it is generally agreed that killing as a way of keeping gulls out of towns is useless. It is up to the National Government to take a lead in enforcing alternatives, that means DEFRA’s Department of Species Conservation.

Essential National Conservation Measures:

Gulls have increasingly invaded towns because of the easy availability of food while their own natural source – fish in the sea – is diminishing.

1. Their natural food supply must be restored.
Over the past 3 years carers have recorded seabirds arriving weak, under-nourished and often poisoned by eating our rotting food wastes which gives them enteritis or botulism. Gulls, like us humans, are keen on labour-saving ways of living. As well as hunting for fish, predictable and fresh food supplies provided to them at sea have dropped. Flocks of seabirds have been escorting ships from ports for food wastes which are jettisoned. Now the International Maritime Organization in order to reduce pollution of the sea is persuading crews to keep food wastes on board and discharge them in facilities which are supposed to be provided in ports.

Government policy over the past 30 years has reduced our fishing fleets in favour of those of other EU countries, notably Portugal and Spain. Gull lovers and gull haters have a joint interest in pressing for restoration of control of our coastal fisheries and keeping out Portuguese and Spanish beam trawlers which rip up the sea-bed, destroying fishes’ spawning grounds and creatures like sand eels, one of the chief sources of food for cod. Their continuous trawling does far more damage than dredging, as dredging companies work only in small, limited areas at any one time.

Drawings by courtesy of The Sussex Sea Fisheries District Committee.

2. Gulls fly up to 30 miles in any direction for their food.
If the policy of cutting their food supply in towns is to succeed, it must be applied right round our coasts. If one town cuts it, they will simply fly to the neighbouring town and cause problems there. In any case as the problem has developed un checked, it is going to take time to ease the situation.

DEFRA should be spear-heading an information campaign instead of making General Licences to kill available to virtually all urban residents because over the last two generations, the UK population has been losing its connection with the sea and therefore knowledge of marine wildlife. Through its Species Conservation Department, there should be a legal requirement for all Local Councils to produce cheaply a typed information leaflet for distribution through local estate agents, tourist offices, libraries, and environmentally concerned businesses to make would-be residents aware of the local wildlife and warn them against misplaced kindness of feeding seabirds except along the seashore. There must be safe disposal of food wastes: so wheelie-bins or closed rubbish bins, must be compulsory, plastic rubbish sacks should not be tolerated and fines for throwing away unwanted food, often scattered around fast-food outlets, - ends of sandwiches and the like – should be imposed.

3. DEFRA must see residents are informed of humane ways to keep gulls from building nests on roofs by

• Knocking nests off roofs – but the gulls are liable to rebuild.
• Rendering eggs infertile by dipping them in ordinary liquid paraffin and replacing them in the nest; the oil dries quickly so the birds do not notice; as the eggs do not hatch they abandon the nest.
• Installing anti-nesting devices in favourite sites, e.g. at the foot of chimney stacks on pitched roofs.

Actually doing this is often not simple at all, since it has to be done when both adults are away from the nest and it depends on access. The height of most buildings makes access by ladders from outside difficult. If there is no access from inside via a skylight, say, then the cost rises considerably; specialist contractors may have to be employed.

Special Anti-Nesting Devices

Gulls may be prevented from building nests in the first place by installing special devices in favourite nesting sites, for example at the foot of chimney stacks on pitched roofs. The devices are quite cheap; specialist firms will advise on what is best for any particular roof and maintain them from one nesting season to the next, checking that they have not been damaged by winter storms. These under-publicised devices have to be in place by the end of March as the weather determines when nesting starts and the timing of longish spells of reasonable weather in Britain is uncertain. Awkward corners and large expanses of flat roofs requiring numbers of devices increase installation costs.

Local Council Environmental Health Departments should be legally required to keep registers of reputable specialists in this kind of work.

Culling should only be a last resort

	The tips of these wires protecting roofs from the gulls are not sharp: they are squared in order not to injure the birds. Wires with humane blunted points have proved as good at keeping even motivated birds away as those with sharp points.

covering a corner

Clearly DEFRA cannot adequately monitor the whole country from its two centres in Bristol and London. Monitoring would only be effective if administered by Local Councils’ Environmental Health and Pest Control Departments supported by the Government with the necessary funding.

The SOS Trust believes that the 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act must be amended urgently to incorporate these new specific legal requirements. The National Government has been slow to recognise a severe problem in built-up coastal areas like the south east of England. Continental coastal towns whose citizens dispose of their food wastes carefully prove that these seabirds need not create difficulties: without the attraction of easily available waste food they stay in their own habitats and come only to beaches and cliffs. With Parliamentary concern about the marine ecology rising, the Save Our Seabirds Trust urges MPs to take a direct interest in the reviewing of this Act quickly.  

Photograph by Paula Deamer