Meeting of the Parliament 26 June 2025
I thank Douglas Ross for bringing the debate to the chamber. It is good to have the opportunity to explore what more can be done to deal with local seagull issues, many of which have been reported to me as well.
I live next to an industrial estate in Inverness, so I absolutely understand the issues that seagulls can cause in residential areas in particular. My mother always used a different name for them that many Highlanders would recognise, but I will not repeat it in the chamber.
I receive a disproportionate number of complaints about these birds in certain communities. It is not just about the noise and the mess that they make, and the fact that they are a nuisance; I am aware that people have been injured and that property has been damaged. Douglas Ross mentioned some extreme incidents, which clearly have a massive impact on people’s lives.
Therefore, it is important that councils and their partners are able to react more quickly when issues emerge. By the time an issue is noticed and then reported and responded to, it is often past the point at which measures such as targeting eggs can be considered and can be effective. From then on, it is hard to row back on the disruption, rather than just limiting how much worse it gets year on year.
NatureScot issues licences as a last resort when there are issues of public safety. However, between there being no issues and the need to take measures as a last resort, there are opportunities for us to prevent the problem from becoming dire. When I look out of my kitchen window, I can see seagulls nesting on the spikes that are there to drive them away, so perhaps we need to reconsider what measures are actually effective and which measures local councils and partners should be allowed to undertake.
I know that the Inverness and Nairn business improvement districts often manage to target seagull issues successfully, and I thank them for that. People do not very often reach out to me, as an MSP, to share good news or positive feedback, but I have heard repeatedly that the BIDs’ work in partnership with tenants associations, businesses and building owners has often meant that good progress is made and people’s contributions are listened to.
However, as somebody who served as a councillor six years ago and was, at that time, involved in the decision—as mentioned in Douglas Ross’s motion—to continue to award funding from the Inverness common good fund to tackle the problem, I know that progress feels very slow. I have also had constituents write in with concerns about the approaches that are taken in destroying eggs. They feel that it is not always a last resort but sometimes the only option available.
In Nairn, one person said to me that it is usually human behaviour that she witnesses that encourages the birds. She often finds people, whether they are locals or tourists, littering or intentionally feeding the seagulls. We cannot blame those birds for moving in when they get an easy meal, but we can do more to discourage such behaviour by humans.
NatureScot has a duty to protect the species. It is rare, but not unheard of, that a constituent wants to kill the birds indiscriminately, with no regard to the species being able to survive. People do not want the extreme and dangerous behaviour that takes place when the situation is allowed to get out of control.
I agree with colleagues that we need to give local communities a full range of options to deal with gulls and prevent situations from getting out of control, when the birds have started to pose a risk and when concerns have been raised. I look forward to hearing the minister’s response to the suggestions.
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