"DON'T DUMP ON 5,000 PEOPLE," runs a huge yellow notice at Dunshaughlin, Meath. And. no doubt, other towns throughout the country threatened with the opening of dumps run similar campaigns. Dump on someone else. Or just make our/your rubbish vanish somehow. Apart from the roar of the lorries and the stuff they're bound to strew along the roads as they come and go, there's the anticipation of the smell. Another curse of dumps is that they draw huge flocks of birds which scream and splatter the area with their excrement. It's surprising how far inland the gulls, the noisiest of all dumphaunters, can be found.
Anyway, we always knew the Welsh were clever. Cardiff County Council has come up with a solution to the bird menace. They have hired two falconers, on a one year £22,000 contract, to drive off the marauding birds from their 100 acre municipal dump or tip. An aviary has been built on the site, housing about a dozen birds: owls, falcons, buzzards, kestrels and, writes Martin Morgan in The Field, sometimes an American eagle. Apart from their screechings and splashing, the gulls etc. pick through what an official describes as a biodegradable cover, which is used to stop dust and smells. Here in Ireland we can ask ourselves do our dumps have such a covering? Hopefully, yes.
And, according to the same official, the £22,000 they pay to the falconers is far less than the cost of replacing this cover. Last summer the number of seagulls was reduced from around 6,000 to a few hundred. The falconers rotate their guardian birds. In general, the owl keeps the birds off the tip and the other birds scare them away, way off. The project is described as an environmentally friendly way of handling the problem.
How do we compare with the South Wales Cardiff County Council for such an ingenious and daring experiment? Have we enough falconers if the idea takes on? And do our dumps have this biodegradable covering to stop dust and smells? And, to anticipate complaints, "the seagulls aren't killed, as the raptors are under the control of the falconers."