Not far from where Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was filmed, the seagull population is blowing up and it can't be figured out how to stop it.
Decades ago, its population was so low, because of its limited range and diminishing numbers at its historic breeding colony at Mono Lake, that it was even listed as a “Species of Special Concern” in California. But then a number of gulls headed west and created a new colony in the southern part of San Francisco Bay, from 24 in 1980 to 53,000 today.
"It's got to plateau at some point," Cheryl Strong, a biologist with the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, told the San Jose Mercury News. "Could it double again in the next few years? I don't want to think about that."
The gull boom is causing mayhem. The birds are bumping with airplanes, canceling takeoffs and landings at Bay Area airports. They're swarming landfills, which use propane cannons and skilled falcons to chase them off.
“It’s a constant Battle”, stated Rick King, general manager of the Newby Island landfill near Milpitas.
During the summer, volunteers stand watch over nests of endangered shorebirds in the area, blowing air horns at any gulls that come near.
Exterminating gulls is really tricky. It is protected by one of America’s older environmental laws, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 so killing it and fiddling with its eggs is illegal.
California gulls aren’t alone. Seagulls are all over Southwest England too. Western gulls, which also live in the Bay area, disturb giant games in the late innings.
One possible factor for gulls’ uber population is Global Warming. It is found in a 2006 study of the California gulls that remain at Mono Lake that when the weather is warm, the colony laid more eggs.
In 2007, A group of local park officials, weary of seeing gulls everywhere, secured permit to kill 45 gulls a year and surprisingly, it’s working.
Wildlife service officials at Hayward Regional Shoreline Park have used shotguns to pick off an average of 20 gulls a year from 2007 to 2011. But they target the worst egg eaters or “Charles Manson gulls” as Dave Riensche, a biologist with the East Bay Regional Park District, described them. “If you get rid of them, the problem is solved”, he added.
"It's like in the schoolyard, if you remove the bully, the other kids don't learn that behavior."
