No one seems to love herring gulls, not least\u00a0the Prime Minister who felt compelled the other day to declare yet another pointless war with an enemy that we probably had a significant hand in creating. The\u00a0RSPB argues the contrary that the population has halved and down to\u00a0378,000 pairs, which makes our wee colony of a few hundred\u00a0seem a tad insignificant.<\/p>\n
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The JNCC, who are the UK repository for nature conservation facts and figures say that “reasons for decline in the herring gull are not fully known<\/em>” and in one breath blame botulism from refuse tips and in the next the lack of\u00a0food scavenged from those same tips.\u00a0Can it be that\u00a0discards from fisheries have played a role?<\/p>\n What is known is that numbers of gulls have been increasing in towns and that this has something to do with rich\u00a0pickings courtesy of a burgeoning\u00a0fast-food sector, lazy disposal of wastes in black bin liners or even lazier lot who leave bins open, along with dazzling street lighting and lack of natural predators. It seems that human control methods are not terribly effective\u00a0(we haven’t tried eating them, which I reckon might work) as the wily things quickly find workarounds.<\/p>\n All of which draws one to conclude that the Herring Gull is\u00a0probably a\u00a0survivor.<\/p>\n In their defence, Stephen Moss writes eloquently:<\/p>\n