FERGUS EWING: Seagull menace and lack of progress on Nairn bypass
“They are a total menace”, a Nairn constituent told me at my surgery last week - seagulls.
In Fishertown in Nairn they have been rampant - and rule the roost.
A quick internet search will reveal that in their hunt for food many children have been injured from seagull dive bombing.
An elderly lady told me she is scared to leave her home for fear of attack.
Decades ago, when I was fitter (and thinner) I was attacked by a gull whilst out running between Lossie and Burghead.
Every year, I have had many constituents tell me their own tales of woe.
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Seagulls are protected in law and NatureScot (formerly SNH) are the Gull Police. Or are they? Last year in Nairn licences were issued to enable 1000 eggs to be removed from nests on roofs. But this year there were only 105. Why?
This was because NatureScot changed their approach. Licences were initially refused, then granted late. Too late. Chicks had hatched.
The Seagull Police abandoned their beat!
I took this failure up with the quango after having received not only individual complaints but also representations from the Nairn Business Improvement District - BID. They have worked hard on this and done all the right things.
But now after this year’s fiasco and botch up by NatureScot they are saying that next year, to get the licences the following work must be done: cleaning of roofs and gutters; clear nesting material; install gull-sharers and netting and use lasers as deterrents.
As Lucy Harding of the Nairn BID said: “Doing all of this would bankrupt us, even if we could contact and gain permission from all of the owners of the flats, shops and holiday accommodation.”
They are meeting NatureScot on August 21. Unless NatureScot enter the real world of practicalities then I shall certainly be, like the seagulls in Nairn, “swooping down” on the government mInister responsible for oversight of NatureScot to get them to start to remember that people are a species too. Not for nothing was SNH called “See No Humans.”
Since the Nairn Bypass public meeting on May 31, hosted by the Courier’s owners, HN Media, there has been little sign of any further progress.
Before then, at a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary, I urged her to publish a timetable for completion of the bypass. She did not do so and there is no sign of one. Now three and a half years into this session of government and there’s not even a plan, far less tarmac on the road.
This, frankly, is not good enough. There is simply no point in beating about the bush. Excuses won’t wash and just won’t do. Moreover, the government refuses to make public all the advice given to ministers on the Nairn bypass.
What have they got to hide? And if they don’t trust the public with the facts, why should the public trust the government on their promises?
Getting real progress on the bypass is the top priority for me in representing Nairn in Holyrood.
I will do all I can as “Your man in Holyrood” rather than the SNP’s man in Nairn.
