Just a few months in the past, we reported on the humorous viral story of the Blackpool Zoo’s human seagull deterrents. The zoo’s job posting made waves around the globe with its request for outgoing, pleasant, and customer centered candidates who could be snug sporting an enormous fowl costume. You learn that proper. The Blackpool Zoo marketed its want for human scarecrows — or scare-gulls — to decorate in an enormous fowl costume and ward off the seagulls that had turn into a nuisance.
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This answer to nuisance seagulls could also be uncommon, however the grievance of gulls stealing meals, harassing guests, and customarily overstaying their welcome is commonplace in lots of coastal areas, and even some inland areas. Seagulls are gregarious, daring, opportunistic, and notoriously food-motivated. It’s no shock that these birds are inclined to take up residence in areas with excessive foot visitors and loads of meals. Like Ocean Metropolis, New Jersey.
Ocean Metropolis New Jersey is dwelling to a well-liked boardwalk which boasts theme parks with thrill rides, film theatres, and a wide range of shops and eating places. The boardwalk and downtown areas of Ocean Metropolis are apparent attractants for gulls. To fight this, Ocean Metropolis employs East Coast Falcons. East Coast Falcons is an organization which employs falconers for the aim of seagull abatement. East Coast Falcons has been serving Ocean Metropolis since 2019.
Regardless of the corporate’s title, falcons will not be the one birds that the falconers make use of to regulate the gulls. Two Harris’s Hawks and a Eurasian Eagle-owl additionally serve on Ocean Metropolis’s seagull patrol.
This abatement technique shouldn’t be all that completely different from the Blackpool Zoo’s technique. Each make the most of the truth that birds of prey are the pure predators of seagulls. As an alternative of a human in a fancy dress, although, Ocean Metropolis’s raptors are the actual deal.
Collaborative relationships between people and birds of prey are a few of the most human-animal partnerships round. Relationship way back to 6,000 BC, people have relied on educated birds of prey as searching companions. Now, they might simply disperse one of many Jersey Shore’s most infamous pests.
So far as the seagulls are involved, this abatement program is more likely to have total constructive results on them too. When populations of seagulls are fed by people — both deliberately or by pressure — their numbers inflate past what the habitat can assist. They will’t cease consuming human meals as a result of there are too a lot of them to outlive on their pure food regimen. Human meals isn’t wholesome for them and this lack of steadiness within the shore’s ecosystem isn’t wholesome for anybody. As an alternative of dangerous pest management strategies that will impression different animals, these raptors have an actual shot at bringing this ecosystem into steadiness by letting nature do its job.
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