Seagulls in Whitehaven

"Don't Blame Innocent Gulls

Chris Whiteside is wrong to blame the seagulls"

(Whitehaven News, April 2007)

"War on seagull menace

Children being attacked

Angry Whitehaven residents are suffering a two-pronged attack from problem seagulls ... "


(Front page Whitehaven News headline this week)

It seems that the Whitehaven News has slightly changed their position on seagulls in the town since they stirred up an amazing amount of fuss six years ago with an attack on me, admittedly one which came over as partly tongue in cheek, over a few words in this blog about problem seagulls.

What I originally wrote here on 16th April 2007, reporting from feedback on the doorstep in Bransty during the 2007 council election campaign, was as follows:

"There are a lot of these birds in Whitehaven at the moment. You always expect some on coasts and around a harbour but the population is such that some are coming further inland. They can be noisy and aggressive, and in areas where rubbish is still collected in black bags rather than wheelie bins, seagulls have caused an environmental health hazard by tearing the bags open looking for food, and thereby strewing rubbish over the street.

"Copeland council is responsible for pest control; is it time for a set of measures to be taken to check the seagull population in Whitehaven?

"I would like to see an investigation into the environmental impact of the seagull population at it's present level, which should establish whether there is a case for a humane programme of population control."


I took a certain amount of flak over that at the time, and it didn't help that my actual position of supporting non-lethal and humane population control was misrepresented at best as a call for a gull cull and at worst as a proposal to exterminate the entire gull population of the town (which would of course be quite impossible.) However, when the subject has since been raised at council or public meetings, the majority view has nearly always been that the aggressive behaviour of the birds and their propensity for causing a mess were potential problems which need to be monitored and that the population might well need to be reduced.

There are some very strong expressions of concern on Hillcrest and in other parts of Whitehaven this week, both about gulls causing mess and apparently about them "bombing" residents including children. I will post a link when the article goes up on their website.

Watch this space.

Postscript: here is the link:

http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/news/war-on-seagull-menace-1.1085513

I am also happy to clarify that the people who accused me of wanting a gull cull or trying to make Whitehaven a town without seagulls were correspondents on the Whitehaven News letters page, and not the editorial or news article or the paper itself.

A couple of weeks later, after I had made a joke about the humane non-lethal reduction in the population of Labour councillors, (at the election) one Labour candidate even accused me in the same forum of encouraging the assassination of my political opponents !!

Comments

Jim said…
Well, Most birds of prey will hunt and kill seagulls, and believe it or not so do some species of whale.

There is the answer, lets place a family of orca's in the harbour, and release 500 pairs of Eagles on the clffs.

also around 50 pairs of vultures will clean up any discarded carcasses in the event a hawk cant finish its meal.

What could possibly go wrong? :o)
Chris Whiteside said…
Remember the song which begins with the line

"There was an old lady who swallowed a fly"

and ends

"There was an old lady who swallowed a horse.

She died, of course."
Colin Edgar, Editor, The Whitehaven News said…
What we wrote at the time was: "Chris Whiteside is wrong to blame the seagulls for the mess often strewn around our streets. It seems rather unfair to pick on them – after all, it’s not the seagulls who leave bin bags for days at a time on the streets." In a tongue-in-cheek way that was agreeing with the point you made.
We also quoted you as saying: "Now it’s possibly time to think about pest control. I think the council should carry out an investigation into whether something can be done to check the population."
I can't find anything in our archive to suggest you specifically called for a cull.
By the by, in the very same 2007 blog you said wrote about concerns for the future of local hospital services. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...
Chris Whiteside said…
Colin, lovely to hear from you.

Happy to clarify that the people who accused me of calling for a "gull cull" were correspondents on your letters pages and not the editorial or news item in the Whitehaven News itself.

I accept that the attack on me was tongue-in-cheek and indeed I used those words in yesterday's blogpost.

Too right about the hospital.

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