{"id":592217,"date":"2026-05-19T09:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T09:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/592217\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T09:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T09:51:08","slug":"the-gulls-have-won-row-over-plans-to-control-birds-in-inverness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/592217\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The gulls have won&#8217;: Row over plans to control birds in Inverness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Labour Inverness Central councillor Michael Gregson described the urban gull population as an &#8220;epidemic&#8221; that had &#8220;colonised our city&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Highland Alliance Inverness South councillor Duncan McPherson claimed the 32 to 35-year lifespan of the birds was a &#8220;prison sentence&#8221; for the residents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He asked: &#8220;Do the gulls have the vote and do the gulls pay business rates?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Because it would appear that the gulls are being treated better than the people of this area.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Inverness Business Improvement District (Bid) previously oversaw a programme of egg and nest removal in the city centre to reduce the population.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But it pulled out of the programme earlier this year due to a lack of funding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McPherson praised the work previously done by Inverness Bid, and said the new plans did not go far enough. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Council officials said egg and nest removals were not &#8220;off the cards&#8221; under the proposals, but added that the birds&#8217; behaviour had changed over time, so a new approach was required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour Inverness Central councillor Michael Gregson described the urban gull population as an &#8220;epidemic&#8221; that had &#8220;colonised our&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-592217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}