this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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Seagulls are more endangered than people think they are, though (red listed in the UK, population decline of over 50% in the last 40 years), in large part because humans took all their food. I think a fair trade might be that they won't steal our chips if we don't steal their fish? You know, rather than pointless animal cruelty. Fuck this dude.
Definitely fuck this dude.
Growing up, there were stories of kids feeding them baking powder, which always seemed a horrible thing to do.
Afaik, black backed and herring gulls (which to my knowledge are the most common around here) are classed as LC.
But we should absolutely be cutting back on fishing. It'll be a sad day when the fisheries inevitably collapse :(
We had an injured one outside my house last summer. Some local kids kicked it to death literally while I was on the phone to the RSPCA to find out if it could be helped. Kids suck.
Herring gulls are LC globally, but are now on the red list for the UK-specific bird conservation list (and amber for Ireland), due to the massive decline in population here. For black-backed gulls, it's amber and green respectively, so they're not as badly affected, but their UK population is still in decline. Whether a local population is worth protecting when a species is doing okay globally is a matter of some debate, of course, but I feel we would have lost something as a country if we didn't have seagulls anymore, regardless of whether the rest of the planet has them or not.
Thanks for the info, TIL!
I do remember seeing herring gulls eating, then getting chased off by bigger black-backs.