Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Editorial: Don’t curse the seagulls

The next time a gull soars over your car and makes a deposit on it, be grateful. Researchers at the University of British Columbia say the world’s seabird populations have dropped 70 per cent since the 1950s.
The next time a gull soars over your car and makes a deposit on it, be grateful. Researchers at the University of British Columbia say the world’s seabird populations have dropped 70 per cent since the 1950s.

UBC master’s student Michelle Paleczny and co-authors of the study compiled information on more than 500 seabird populations from around the world, representing 19 per cent of the global seabird population. They found overall populations had declined by 69.6 per cent, equivalent to a loss of about 230 million birds in 60 years, UBC said in a statement.

A variety of factors are to blame: overfishing of the fish that seabirds rely on for food, birds getting tangled in fishing gear, plastic and oil pollution, introduction of non-native predators to seabird colonies, destruction and changes to seabird habitat, and environmental and ecological changes caused by climate change.

Closer to home, a UBC study on glaucous-winged gulls, the most common seagull species on B.C.’s southern coast, found populations of that species started to drop in the mid-1980s. A 2010 bird count showed a 57 per cent decline in nesting pairs since 1986. Researchers blame lower numbers of herring and other high-protein fish that are a major part of the gulls’ diet.

“Seabirds are particularly good indicators of the health of marine ecosystems,” says Paleczny. “When we see this magnitude of seabird decline, we can see there is something wrong with marine ecosystems. It gives us an idea of the overall impact we’re having.”

A bit of whitewash on a car seems a small problem by comparison.