Shallow trot hooks four ‘seagulls being seagulls’
Thursday 27th September 2012, 10:00AM BST.
Manager of Alderney Wildlife Trust Roland Gauvain issued the warning after a longline set out at Braye Bay ensnared four gulls.
THE manager of Alderney Wildlife Trust has warned that people setting poorly laid trotlines could be open to prosecution.
Roland Gauvain issued the warning after a longline set out at Braye Bay ensnared four gulls.
At around 9pm on a Saturday someone at the Divers Inn rang Alderney Animal Welfare Society veterinary nurse Jeanette Bathgate to alert her to a gull caught on a line off Braye Beach.
She sought out AWT ecologist James Allison at Essex Farm and together they waded out 20 metres in the dark to find a fishing line around a metre under the water attached to buoys.
The line was threaded with around a dozen three-inch hooks, baited with chunks of mackerel.
A spokesman for Alderney Police said: ‘People are entitled to put down trotlines and this incident was seagulls just being seagulls.’
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….and a policeman who can dismiss birds, possibly in agony, is just a policeman being a policeman.
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Seagulls are responsible for the constant mess made over peoples cars and for broken bags strewn all over the street. The sooner these screeching flying rats become extinct the better. Wasps too.
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I think that it might be a good idea to reconsider where you live…
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Er, no Wayne, humans are responsible for the problems of strewn rubbish. If you put sunflower seeds out in your garden, you’ll attract Greenfinches, if you put edible waste out in the street, you’ll get gulls.
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What a shame the Alderney Police have that sort attitude!
Your are right Wayne seagulls can be a pest, but to be fair its the people and our rubbish that have caused them to behave the way they do. As for extinction – may be humans should be too after all we have made much more of mess on this plant than the seagull ever will…mmmmm wasps though I could be with you on that :-D
With this particular issue the seagulls were where they were supposed to be, doing what they are supposed to do.
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The Alderney police are not doing what they are paid to do. The person who set this line should be warned that he/she was negligent. Then if they permit it to happen again, then it is a crime. Like them or not, gulls have the same legal protection as any other wild bird.
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@ Den
Not sure which ‘plant’ you are referring to that we have messed up. Spell check may help but it really does not mask stupidity. Why bother improving States Schools. If you are meant to be on a shovel then in the main those aspirations will be realised.
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@ English, chill out – it was just a typo by Den and we all knew what the word was meant to be. By the way, your third sentence needs a question mark at the end of it!
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Feel sad for whoever set the line, bet that was not their intention other than catch fish
Can see why police not involved
But! In Guernsey seen Shags and Cormorants with those horrible hooks causing a slow painful death
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