“out of control”<\/a> last year after councillors heard that seven children had been attacked by the birds in the space of a month.<\/p>\nA new report to Scottish Borders councillors has recommended consulting the local community, and also taking a number of measures.<\/p>\n
They include asking people not to feed gulls, also introducing bird-proof bins and installing gull deterrents on rooftops.<\/p>\n
Independent councillor James Anderson has raised concerns about problem gulls before and told of incidents of gulls swooping and injuring people.<\/p>\n
Scotland’s nature body, NatureScot, has indicated a willingness to discuss potential management strategies, but said there was a need to balance conservation with public safety.<\/p>\n
The Scottish Borders Council report said: “While gulls are a natural part of the coastal environment, where those coastal areas are also built up, their presence prompts a range of views from local communities.<\/p>\n
“In some areas, particularly in Eyemouth, some members of the public have raised concerns about gull behaviour, especially during nesting season when gulls may become more protective of their young.”<\/p>\n
It added: “These concerns have included issues such as noise, perceived aggression and the disturbance caused by gulls accessing waste.”<\/p>\n
The report said the local authority had not seen a significant increase in formal complaints in recent years.<\/p>\n
But it acknowledged gull-related issues were raised periodically by community councils, councillors and through public forums.<\/p>\n
Reporting by local democracy journalist Paul Kelly.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents of Eyemouth look set to be consulted on a draft management plan to tackle problems caused by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-79360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}