Inverness BID Launches ‘GULL WATCH’ Campaign to Strengthen Incident Reporting

Inverness BID has today launched its new ‘GULL WATCH’ campaign, with a clear focus this year on encouraging the reporting of gull-related incidents to better understand the impact on people and businesses across the city centre and wider Inverness area.

With the BID Gull Management Programme currently suspended, the campaign is centred on one key message: report any impactful or harmful gull-related incidents you experience or witness.

BID Ambassador & Operations Coordinator, Janice Worthing, who led the operational aspects of the BID programme explained:

“While efforts are being made to improve data on gull populations, it is disappointing that the serious impact and increasing conflict in some cases, affecting businesses and people is not being equally considered or properly recorded.

We therefore welcome that Highland Council has stepped in to bridge the gap and has launched an incident reporting portal to help capture this information. However, for the new portal to be effective, people need to be aware it is there and they need to use it.

In 2024 and 2025, we captured many reports of adverse incidents involving children, older people, and others suffering serious injuries, or harm and in some cases requiring hospital treatment. For more vulnerable individuals or groups, divebombing incidents can also be extremely distressing.

High-density, unmanaged urban gull populations can also negatively impact bird welfare, including chicks falling from rooftops and being run over. The bird flu outbreak last year was a stark reminder of how quickly disease can spread where populations are overly concentrated leading to further potential risk.

Overall we must record not just bird numbers, but wider animal welfare, and the real impacts on our communities of concentrated gull populations, so if you do experience or witness an incident, please take a moment to report it at:

https://www.highland.gov.uk/pests-pollution-noise/manage-gulls.