07/22/2025
"But the beach is their natural habitat! Why do you chase the seagulls off of it?!"
This is a question we get frequently, and a very understandable one. Seagulls are a shorebird, and Lake Michigan shorelines are THEIR habitat. How can a team of wildlife biologist amd other birds experts force them out?
Gulls are messy birds. They p**p every 20-30 minutes. Their droppings contain high concentrations of a wide variety of viruses and bacteria, many of which could make people sick. When large flocks of gulls take over a recreational beach and sit there all day, every day, that p**p adds up. It's in the sand kids play in, the water people swim in. You get the bacteria on your hands and in your mouths without even realizing you are coming into contact with it. Especially in the hot summer on a sheltered beach, those pathogens can be viable for a very long time, continuing to build up.
Beach managers test water quality regularly, both the amount of bacteria, and where that bacteria is coming from (people, dogs, cows, birds, etc., called microbial source tracking). To try to protect swimmers and beach-goers from getting sick, they close the beach and institute swimming bans when pathogen loads on the beach are too high.
The beaches we service are not some random bits of shoreline. They are heavily utilized recreation centers, and important cooling locations during hot summer weather for people that dont have access to air conditioning. They are also economic powerhouses, providing thousands of dollars of inflow of money into the area every hot summer day. And on top of that, there is real evidence that the gull populations are the primary cause of the issue.
We aren't kicking the gulls off the entire shoreline. We aren't making them leave the beach during cooler seasons when most people aren't going to be using the beach. We are targeting specific urban beaches at specific times where it will achieve the most benefits and where we know we can make a difference by keeping beaches open and safe for use.
And we are doing so in a humane way that actually has benefits for the birds. For as long as humans and animals share this planet there will be conflicts. Human frustration and human fear of animals can lead to choices lethal for the birds. In addition, many urban bird species, especially geese and gulls, become very habituated to humans and the things that go along with them, including dogs. Teaching these birds, in a safe way with a well trained border collie, that dogs are a real threat can actually protect them from untrained pets that are loose.
