Time to act against urban gull menace

Bath’s MP Wera Hobhouse is to be congratulated for taking on Natural England for failing to provide an adequate licence for controlling the number of breeding gulls in our city (“Bath gull trial compromising public health and safety”, November 24).

“People’s health is suffering from the lack of sleep induced by gull noise every spring,” she says, “but Natural England simply responds by saying if it’s too noisy, close your windows and move your beds.”

Quite rightly this makes our MP angry, as it does Bath residents who have to put up with the mess and noise of hundreds of breeding gulls every year.

Citing the professional opinion of B&NES’ environmental health officers that this persistent nesting close to human accommodation poses a genuine risk to health, she finds “it offensive that their judgement is being dismissed in such a flippant manner.”

Instead, Natural England and Rebecca Pow MP, the government minister protecting their intransigence, insist that urban gulls be treated as endangered species when they are in fact thriving, as Natural England’s own recent survey revealed.

Four fifths of UK gulls now live in city centres, not their traditional coastal habitat. Urban nesting Herring Gulls are estimated to be as high as 274,676, says the Natural England report, with an average 15.8 per cent of the population staying in their traditional locations compared to 84.2 per cent of gulls on urban roofs where their nests are safer from natural predators.

It is also to be noted that urban gulls are not primarily attracted to city centres because of discarded food refuse, but because of safe roof-top nesting, with their main feeding taking place in the middle of the day when they fly outside the city to farming land or open refuse sites.

When is Natural England going to accept that urban gulls are now a menace to many heritage centres across the UK and should not be protected from measures to radically reduce their numbers?

Tim Newark

Bath