‘Defecating all over’: Ada County Landfill operators are fighting swarms of seagulls

The Ada County Landfill had a poop problem. For years, nearly 2,000 seagulls swarmed the landfill just north of Boise, looking for meals in its food waste. They were especially partial to chicken nuggets.

In the process, these invasive birds blocked the vision of workers operating large machinery and presented them with a health risk .

“They were definitely defecating all over,” said Rebecca Weeks, the landfill’s education and outreach manager, told the Idaho Statesman.

The gulls had to go. But getting rid of them was no easy feat. Landfill operators tried “poppers,” small cannons that make loud noises to scare the birds, but these disturbed the neighbors — and once the dust settled, the birds always came back, said Herb Cantu, the landfill’s director.

The best way to get rid of the birds, it turned out, was with more birds. In June, the landfill started working with The Hawk Proz , a company based in Eagle, naturally, that brings in hawks and falcons to scare invasive bird species away.

“This is something that’s really core (to) their soul, being fearful of predators,” Alyssa Pravongviengkham, the company’s owner, told the Statesman. “It just works.”

In six weeks, the number of gulls at the landfill has plummeted. “It’s like night and day,” Cantu said.

Gulls are very social, so if just a few are targeted, the whole group feels threatened. “It’s just really working with the seagulls’ mentality and psychology,” Pravongviengkham said.

In the first days of its program, Hawk Proz had to “set the tone” with the gulls, rotating seven of its hawks and falcons in and out to catch — and usually release — seagulls. The birds of prey remained in force for about three more weeks to give the gulls the idea that “this is not sustainable any longer.” After three months, birds usually get the picture, Pravongviengkham said, and largely stop coming back.

On Friday, a few gulls had returned, but Joseph Pravongviengkham, Alyssa’s husband and business partner, was ready with one of their hawks, Nezzy. He pointed Nezzy toward one seagull. She grabbed it out of the air and pinned it to the ground until Pravongviengkham traded a piece of meat for the seagull and sent the shaken-up gull on its way.

Seagulls can live to be 50 years old, so “once they establish a routine and a habit and a way of survival, they tend to follow that program really strictly,” Alyssa Pravongviengkham said. “We really need to drive the point home with the birds that we’re changing their habit.”

Even now, a few gulls — Alyssa Pravongviengkham calls them the “ding-dongs” — return every so often to scout out whether it’s safe to move back in.

“They seem to not know anything about what’s happening,” she said. “They seem very confused, like, ‘Where did everybody go?’ And then if you are able to chase one of them with a hawk, they’ll relay the message to the others, and then we’ll have a quiet day.”

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