It’s a dog’s life, being banned, just because you’re a dog.
But that’s the implication of Australian research published today, which found that there are fewer birds where dog-walkers go walkies.
The range of bird species was down 35 per cent and the number of individual birds reduced by 41 per cent on sites near Sydney where the study was done. Humans walking alone also disturbed birds but caused less than half the disruption prompted by dogs on leads.
So what does that mean for the RSPB’s reserves?
We bar dogs from some reserves at some times of the year, for very good conservation reasons.
We let dogs kept under close control onto reserves through which a public right of way runs, and are happy to do so.
Elsewhere we ask that dogs be restrained from roaming freely for obvious reasons.
Most birds take flight at the least inkling of trouble, understandably so. Birds are the smallest and most vulnerable in most confrontations, so why take the chance? What we don’t know is whether those birds fly back once the danger has passed. They do, after all, when we close our back doors behind us having watched birds fly off as we walked past the garden birdfeeder.
Dog walkers in our experience are responsible types and we welcome visitors to most of our sites with or without their dogs. We ask for consideration for wildlife – wildlife comes first on nature reserves after all – but we will not now be banning any canine companions.
Click here for more on the research