Common claims about gulls

Last reviewed 25 August 2026. Each claim is set against what the published evidence says, with the source. Where the evidence is partial or contested, that is stated rather than resolved.

“There are more gulls than ever”

Partly true, and the part that is true is the smaller part. Two things are happening at once and they point in opposite directions. Urban roof-nesting gulls have increased markedly in recent decades — that is what most people are seeing. Coastal breeding numbers have fallen sharply over the same period: the JNCC records that the herring gull coastal population had fallen by more than half by the time of the Seabird 2000 census.

The Seabirds Count census (2015–21) was the first to develop a reliable method for counting roof-nesting gulls, because the earlier national estimates are considered unreliable for exactly that reason. The JNCC's position is that urban populations, while increasing, remain a relatively small proportion of the UK total and that the increases do not compensate for the declines elsewhere.

So a person in a town centre who says there are more gulls than there used to be is describing their street accurately. It is not a description of the national population, and it is the national population the licensing decisions turn on.

“Gulls are vermin”

There is no such legal category. As with the feral pigeon, no UK statute places a bird in a class called vermin. Every gull is a wild bird protected by section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and one of them — the herring gull — is on the UK Red List. Whatever a person means by the word, it does not describe the bird's legal status, and it does not permit anything.

“Gulls attack people”

Swooping happens, and it is defensive and seasonal. Gulls dive at people who come close to a nest or a flightless chick, which confines most incidents to the breeding season and to the immediate area around a nest site. This is the behaviour that the public health and safety licensing route exists to address, and it is why the regulators treat proofing before the season as the effective intervention and control during it as the last one.

Food-snatching is a different behaviour with a different cause, and the measure the regulators name for it is removing access to food rather than removing the bird.

“They are a serious health risk”

This is the ground on which control is actually licensed, and it is assessed case by case. Natural England's stated priority for individual gull licences is the protection of human life and health, so the claim is not dismissed by the regulator — it is the strongest basis for an application. What the licensing system does not accept is the claim in general terms: an applicant has to show the risk in a particular place, and that non-lethal measures have been tried or ruled out.

“Nothing can be done about them legally”

Not so, but it takes an application. Proofing, exclusion, netting and waste management need no licence at all outside the breeding season and are what the regulators ask to see first. Where those are insufficient, an individual licence is available in every nation. What is no longer available anywhere is acting first and relying on a general licence afterwards.