{"id":760688,"date":"2026-09-05T09:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T09:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/760688\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T09:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T09:32:10","slug":"plea-to-give-thames-seals-space-for-everyones-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/760688\/","title":{"rendered":"Plea to give Thames seals space for everyone’s safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

The charity says more and more of the seals are travelling further up the river, with one spotted as far west as Windsor. <\/p>\n

It is thought there are about 3,500 seals living in the Thames and that they mostly stay around the estuary, east of London.<\/p>\n

Marmalade was considered rare because there are only 500 harbour seals living in the river, compared with about 3,000 of the more common grey seals.<\/p>\n

Gareth Richards from UK Seal Alliance says “seals are very transient, and will basically go to where there is good fish stocks”.<\/p>\n

He says “seals can swim from anything between 60 and 80 miles a day”.<\/p>\n

Because they are being spotted more frequently, Richards says he would like to see further protection of the animals in law.<\/p>\n

Neither grey nor harbour seals are protected from intentional or reckless disturbance under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.<\/p>\n

In May, UK Seal Alliance launched its Give Seals Space, external<\/a> campaign, calling on the government to reconsider previous recommendations and provide the two species “with the legal protection they deserve”.<\/p>\n

The campaign warns that they are highly sensitive to disturbance from the public, animals and drones.<\/p>\n

It states these can have long-lasting consequences to the animals’ health and that it can lead to pup abandonment, wasted energy from staying alert and injuries from panic fleeing.<\/p>\n

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says: “We have a suite of legislative protections in place which make it an offence to take, injure, capture or kill a seal.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The charity says more and more of the seals are travelling further up the river, with one spotted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-760688","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\/760688","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=760688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}