Borough Life Summer 2006: What’s up duck?
Sunday In The park... by the lake a young family is getting ready to feed bread to the ducks. Our feathered friends swim in circles, punctuating the stillness with the quack of anticipation.
It’s an idyllic scene and one repeated up and down the borough each Sunday. But now one of Wigan’s top wildlife experts is warning that it may be doing more harm than good.
Graham Workman, wildlife and countryside development manager with Wigan Leisure & Culture Trust, explained that giving wild ducks human food like bread can lead to heart disease, liver failure and other health problems. It can also lead to unnaturally high numbers of waterfowl, creating the kind of crowded, unsanitary conditions in which disease flourishes.
Graham said: “I know this isn’t going to be popular, but people are unknowingly doing more harm than good both to the birds and other wildlife.
“Uneaten food decays and pollutes the water. A few years ago the fish began to die in areas like Orrell Water Park because of low oxygen levels.” It’s not just bread either. Graham and his team have seen people trying to feed all sorts of leftovers to the ducks, including a full roast chicken dinner!
So what’s the answer?
“Ideally we should be encouraging the ducks to find their own food,” said Graham. “But we don’t want to be killjoys, so if you want to feed the ducks avoid the likes of white bread and stick to natural products like wheat or maize which they find much easier to digest.”