MP aims to lobby for funds

Bath MP Don Foster says funding is needed to help find the best way to tackle the city's gull problem.

Mr Foster, pictured, who has raised the need for research in Parliament on several occasions, said local councils could not keep throwing money at ideas that were not working.

He said: "The big issue for me at the moment is we are trying all sorts of techniques: birds of prey, pretend birds of prey, loud noises, egg oiling, egg replacement, the use of different types of sacks so rubbish isn't easy to get to. All of these approaches are getting nowhere and a huge amount of money is being spent on them. The real problem we face is we lack the knowledge about the lifecycle of urban gulls."

In the Severn Estuary area there are thought to be 25,000 pairs of breeding gulls. On average gulls lay three eggs a year but egg replacement schemes in the region are only replacing two to three thousand eggs a year.

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Mr Foster said his previous attempts to get funding from government had failed but he planned to lobby it again.

He said: "My new strategy is to call a meeting of all interested MPs so we can get together to have another lobby of ministers to get some funding for research. Failing that, if collectively all the affected local authorities would be willing to chip in some money into a central pot, we could commission research."