An uninhabited British island that is so remote a permit is required to visit has been littered with thousands of elastic bands. National Trust Rangers who care for the colony off the Cornish coast were initially left scratching their heads by the phenomenon, which has seen coloured bands strewn across the island.
It is thought to be caused by great black-backed and herring gulls mistaking the bands for food while feeding in agricultural fields on the mainland, before returning to deposit them at roosting sites on the island. The elastic bands are believed to have come from nearby horticultural fields, where they are used to tie together bunches of cut flowers.
Experts monitoring the site found large numbers of tan, yellow and green bands among pellets regurgitated by the birds. Small bundles of green fishing net and twine were also uncovered among the undigested food, likely mistaken by the gulls for tasty morsels floating on the surface of the sea.
Rachel Holder, Area Ranger for the National Trust, said, “Ingested plastic and rubber is another factor in a long list of challenges which our gulls and other seabirds must contend with just to survive. Places like Mullion Island should be sanctuaries for our seabirds, so it’s distressing to see them become victims of human activity.
“Despite being noisy and boisterous and seemingly common, gulls are on the decline. They’re already struggling with changes to fish populations and disturbance to nesting sites – and eating elastic bands and fishing waste does nothing to ease their plight.”
Numbers of great black-backed gull have fallen by 30% in recent years, while the herring gull – the species notorious for pinching food from unaware tourists – now appears on the UK Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern.
Cared for by the National Trust, Mullion Island is a small, rocky outpost a half mile off Mullion Cove on the Lizard Peninsula, that provides a sanctuary for nesting seabirds including great black-backed gulls – the largest species of gull in the world – herring gulls, cormorants and shags.
Lizzy Carlyle, Head of Environmental Practices at the National Trust, added, “Single-use materials are having an alarming impact on our country’s most remote places. It’s up to all of us to take responsibility for how we use and dispose of these items – whether we’re producers or consumers.”
The recent State of Nature report compiled by 70 conservation charities, including the National Trust, highlighted the many challenges faced by seabirds in the UK, including declining fish stocks, loss of habitat and warming seas. Incidents of entanglement and ingestion of plastics by marine animals are now widely reported.
Mark Grantham from the West Cornwall Ringing Group which discovered the bands, said: “We first noticed the bands on a monitoring visit during the breeding season and were puzzled why there were so many and how they’d got there.
“To save disturbing the nesting birds, we made a special trip over in the autumn to clear the litter. Within just an hour we’d collected thousands of bands and handfuls of fishing waste. The gull breeding season was disappointingly poor in 2019 and these hidden human pressures are doing nothing to help our seabirds.”
Traynor On The Trail 