In response to your article in the Gazette & Herald, June 18, with the shocking title "Town's gull cull take 400 eggs", it seems to me the decision to destroy the nests and eggs of these birds have failed to take into account the wider environmental issues involved.

In an article in the RSPB magazine Birds, autumn 2013, the writer David Lindo has much sympathy with people living close to colonies of seagulls, citing raucous behaviour and aggressive dive-bombing birds often festooning unsuspecting passers by with acrid dropping. He goes on to say "....it is hard to explain to those disgruntled that the species involved, the lesser black headed gull and herring gull, are actually declining nationally with the latter listed by the British Trust for Ornithology..... the gulls based in their classic coastal environment have suffered a severe decrease largely due to depleting fish stocks".

It is a fallacy to suggest that seagulls are losing their instincts for coastal regions and the sea and are in effect becoming land lubbers; they are being forced inland because of over-fishing to bring up their young. Kittiwakes for example have declined by a staggering 87 per cent since the year 2000 and only just survive as a species by nesting in unlikely places such as Newcastle and after breeding travel many hundreds of miles across oceans.

If seagulls cannot live by the sea and cannot live inland, where are they to go?

Martin Harper says in a recent RSPB magazine article, "We want to stop common species becoming rare and prevent rare species becoming extinct so we need to learn to live in harmony with nature."

David Scully, Victoria Road, Devizes.