Image not much to rave about

Mr Martin said he had been writing to the City of Stirling council for months about the poor management of rubbish by restaurants, bars and residents but had not yet seen a reduction in the number of birds. ‘There’s no real silver bullet as far as I’m concerned, but what wouldn’t be too hard is to ask residents and occupants of Manning Road to separate their rubbish and keep a better bin enclosure,’ he said. ‘I think that’s the main reason why there’s a population boom and it’s kind of localised to Scarborough. ‘It would be nice with this new redevelopment to see some sort of enforcement keeping rubbish under control.’ The 37-year-old Scarborough local, who ran as the Greens candidate for Stirling in the 2010 election, said the birds and rubbish were adding to the negative image Scarborough was hoping to break free of. ‘It’s the first thing you see when you come down Manning Street, one of the main entrances into Scarborough. It’s these big stinky bins and every day those bins, whenever they’re emptied, they almost religiously spill a couple of bottles over the side and there’s always broken glass on the pavement and this is the main walkway to the beach. ‘It kind of adds to that poor ambience which would be nice to change with this redevelopment, but these are issues that you can deal with without having to redevelop everything. It shouldn’t cost any money to clean that sort of thing up.’ Stirling Mayor David Boothman said the City had decided to target rubbish management rather than the birds themselves. ‘The City’s natural environment working group considered this very issue relating to ravens earlier this year and came to a consensus that the strategy has to be to control rubbish rather than control of ravens per se. ‘By this we mean ensuring that rubbish is contained in places such as behind shopping centres, behind restaurants and fast food outlets with their overflowing bulk bins.’ The Department of Parks and Wildlife said the birds, which are a native species, were destructive and measures should be taken to avoid attracting them. These included providing enough bins and ensuring they were emptied regularly. Mr Martin said he had not seen many other native bird species at the beach in recent years. ‘I’ve only ever seen one sea eagle down there and that was getting chased by a group of crows.’