The British Trust for Ornithology have handed ITV the data that confirm what many had already suspected: Containment efforts have failed amid an “astronomical rise” and the plague of invasive parakeets is now “unstoppable.” Bird enthusiast Viola Ross-Smith of the Trust says “It’s basically going up and up and up… Since 1995 we’ve seen an increase of more than 2000 percent.”
The small, amiable green birds now number in the tens of thousands across Great Britain and may threaten Ireland as well. “We could be looking at exclosures for instance. We could also be looking at mist netting,” Wild Belfast chairman Conor McKinney said of his organization’s ideas on how to stop the spread. “These are nets that are put up, they are practically invisible to birds and then we could collect them by hand. The opportunity is here, the time is ripe, we need to do something about these birds before it gets out of control,” McKinney continued, quaking for man’s dominion.