Today Natural England has announced a new licensing system for the culling of Herring Gulls and Lesser Black-backed Gulls – and it’s pretty good.
These two species were removed from the general licences last year, and rightly so given that they are both declining in numbers. Natural England reveal that their analysis suggests that the scale of killing that took place while these two species were listed under the general licences is feasibly an important contributory factor to those declines. In other words, in these two cases, unregulated, unmonitored, casual killing of these two species under general licences has almost certainly led to their population declines.
So Natural England has come up with a good but slightly complex scheme for future individual licensing of lethal control.
They have split the populations of both species into rural and urban, where rural includes the general countryside but also ports, airports and landfill sites. And Natural England aim for a big reduction in the number of birds killed in this section of the population of both species – control under licence should amount to only 5% of the natural mortality level. The idea is that a reduction of culling levels will allow the populations to cease declining in numbers. So Natural England has prioritised the occasional need for lethal control for human health and air safety reasons above everything else – very sensible. Basically, ports, airports and landfill sites will get most of the licences, after scrutiny by Natural England staff of individual licences.
If overall cull levels have to decrease, and those three areas are prioritised for the smaller number of licences (or smaller number of birds killed, at least), then which areas will have to reduce culling? Well upland areas such as the Forest of Bowland where there is a gull colony which has been culled and which once was far, far bigger, is an obvious contender (I assume, see here and here). Maybe we will see the Bowland Fells SPA Lesser Black-backed Gull colony return to its fotmer glory of 20,000 pairs.
In the urban situation then I understand that applications for licences for lethal control will need to be accompanied by an integrated management strategy which would aim to ensure that, for example, seaside gulls and seaside holidaymakers can all have smiles on their faces. I guess this means better litter bin provision and emptying and maybe some signs suggesting that you don’t buy bags of chips for gulls.
Overall, this seems like a good move and was almost certainly prompted by the increased attention beiing paid to licensing of lethal control these days. Natural England and DEFRA now know that licensing decisions will be subject to scrutiny.
This is, of course, a case where general licences failed badly – unrestricted culls have led to population declines. That’s not the only way that unregulated general licences, with little monitioring, little review and little enforcement can go wrong.
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Sounds like a direct consequence of Wild Justice’ legal challenges to me. Well done.
It will be interesting to see whether the Abbeystead Estate get a licence to cull gulls this year. If this is anything to go by it certainly should not but then it shouldn’t have had such a licence for many years.
Ports…..I suppose there must be the risk that the birds get sucked into ships engines and cause them to plummet all the way down to…..sea level?
So will Gulls join the Hen Harriers, Buzzards, Eagles etc that are found shot and poisoned in mysterious circumstances?
May be this is one significant reason gulls are in decline?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51285103
John – yes although that isn’t what the piece says and it isn’t from the UK and NE have modelled impacts of culling in this country – but it might be another part of the picture
The impact of plastic additives and other chemicals is a worldwide problem. The impact of degrading products on wildlife, particularly in fish and predators of fish has been known for decades.
An ex-Greenpeace employee wrote an amazing (but fairly complicated) book in the 1990s on the subject called (iirc) Pandora’s Box. He was calling for a lifecycle analysis of the impacts of all manufactured items from extraction of materials to final decomposed composition. He suggested that all products should have a proven non-harmful effect before being approved and permitted to be produced and marketed. He went into the chemical breakdown of many plastics and the analysis was pretty horrific.
Dioxins, for example, are known carcinogens, mutagenic etc etc. Amongst other ways, they can be formed in the process of incineration. These dangerous chemicals attach themselves to fatty tissues in the body and can only be removed from the body in breast milk directly into the body of a suckling infant (whether that is a child, dog, cow etc)! If that wasn’t bad enough, fish or land mammals that have dioxin in their bodies pass the dioxin on to predators who eat them and in this way the burden of dioxin in the bodies of predators builds up. If that isn’t a good reason to dump meat, fish and dairy products – I don’t know what is!
The Zero Waste theology calls for an analysis of all products. With a few exceptions, all products should be easily dismantlable, repairable, then, finally, recyclable or compostable.
I, and about 12 other representatives of residents groups living near landfill, incinerator and other waste technology sites, attended a meeting with Defra officials in the early 2000s. The attitude of the officials seemed to be amazement that the residents were calling for a precautionary approach to waste disposal!
Why, over 20 years after I became involved in a waste campaign, we are still in a situation where waste is still a major health and environmental disaster is beyond me.