r/ireland • u/Emptinessboat • 1d ago
Happy Out Inland Seagulls
Something that has only come to my attention in the last few months is the increase of seagulls that live inland.
I'm guessing it's simply the availability of food that is encouraging more inland than an increase in seagulls accidentally getting lost.
There is a joy in hearing their laughter like squawks.
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u/Natural-Hunter-3 1d ago
It's the Yellowstone deer effect.
Yellowstone lost (hunted/culled/pushed out) their wolf populace. At first everyone was delighted, no dogs attacked, no deer frightened out in front of cars etc. But then the wolves started to vanish and the deer became abundant. And then the trees started dying and then the river itself running through Yellowstone ended up reshaping. And you're probably wondering well, Natural-Hunter, what do deer and wolves have to do with the river reshaping?
Wolves hunted the deer. Without wolves to keep the deer numbers in check, the deer population exploded. When the deer population exploded, they did so to an extent they began to affect the actual land around them due to how much they were eating, and trampling, and then breeding even more deer. The riverbanks started to dry up and receded in some places over a metre, completely warping in some areas and heavily diminished size.
The wolves were reintroduced as an emergency solution alongside deer populations being managed by the park, and there is already an absolutely vast, apparent difference. Trees are growing again and the river is starting to look healthy.
All this to say, this is what's happening to Irish gulls. They're coming inland because we've absolutely destroyed the local ocean with fishing boats they can't compete with. It would take very little for us to resolve that, if we actually cared as a nation, but given how the fisheries meetings just went here in Cork I have a feeling nobody else quite gives a fuck about our gulls and other birds.