Residents living in the city centre regularly raise their concerns about the gull problem and the costs and nuisance they incur:
• They defecate on buildings, cars and people.
• Faeces on the ground are very slippery, particularly in wet weather.
• The birds become active very early in the morning in the summer months, and residents are commonly woken in the early hours of the morning by screaming of gulls.
• Clearing up after these birds and, the often ineffectual, schemes to deter them cost a large amount of money
Bath’s economy is dependent on the spending of some 5 million visitors per annum. Feedback from tourists often refers to the nuisance from seagulls.
The number of breeding pairs is measured to be rising inexorably .At best counter measures are slowing this growth; at worse they are simply changing the way gull colonies are distributed.
Tara is supporting Bristol University’s application for funding to undertake much needed research into the behaviour of urban gulls
The Bristol University research proposal offers a real hope of gathering the information needed to target future gull prevention work more effectively.