{"id":638969,"date":"2026-06-14T23:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T23:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/638969\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T23:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T23:03:09","slug":"fears-dogs-to-blame-for-drop-in-seaton-carew-little-tern-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/638969\/","title":{"rendered":"Fears dogs to blame for drop in Seaton Carew little tern numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Little tern numbers at one of the UK&#8217;s most important seabird colonies are down 50% as the number of people allowing their dogs to get too close to them has increased, a wildlife trust as warned.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The small seabirds have nested on the beach at Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, every year since 2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In May, volunteer wardens recorded 427 cases where dogs were inside the exclusion zone and, on just one day in June, 93 breaches were noted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Tees Valley Wildlife Trust&#8217;s little tern warden, Derek Wood, said he worried any additional stress at the site would lead to the birds abandoning their nests and not returning to the area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There are currently 55 nesting pairs on the beach at Seaton Carew; volunteers expected there to be up to 110 pairs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wood said: &#8220;Total dog count in the exclusion zone for May was 427 and that is only from monitoring between 14:00 to 20:00 Monday to Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The exclusion zone is clearly not working, especially if you consider the 93 violations in one day in June.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Little tern numbers at one of the UK&#8217;s most important seabird colonies are down 50% as the number&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-638969","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\/638969","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=638969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}