The sheer gull of it...
Fury at plans to destroy nests & eggs
Senator Lorraine Clifford Lee told the Seanad that “dirty, dangerous seagulls” were becoming more aggressive and posed a serious health and safety risk.
She said: “Seagull droppings contain 10 times more bacteria than pollution caused by human waste and, therefore, this is an urgent health and safety issue.
“One gentleman told me about his five-year-old grandson who was eating in his garden one summer afternoon and was attacked by a seagull and badly injured.”
But Birdwatch Ireland’s Stephen Newton countered: “Where is the evidence? There is a level of hysteria attached to this. The herring gull is under threat. “My worry is that once Balbriggan gets it then Skerries will want it, Howth will want it, where will it end?” According to the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs the work will be overseen locally and Fingal County Council will play no role. The order is confined to the Balbriggan area only and is on a one-year pilot basis, which means if it’s deemed successful the practice could continue and be expanded. Mr Newton, a senior seabird officer with the conservation Heather Humphreys The gulls are under threat
group, said they would “monitor very closely” the exercise.
He added: “What they are looking for is discarded food and if they find that they will stick around. To me the whole solution is people and what they do with their rubbish.
“Gulls are not getting bigger, they are not getting more aggressive, that is just nonsense. You will get one or two thugs but they are not out to kill you.
“Nobody in Balbriggan has even bothered counting how many pairs of nesting gulls there are to start out with. That is a key issue for conservation.”
Humane control measures for gulls include using decoys, electronic sirens, reflective streamers and lasers.
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