How the project began

The Gary the Gull campaign began as a local initiative led by the St Andrews Community Council in response to growing concerns around gull-related issues affecting residents, businesses and public spaces across St Andrews and the wider North East Fife area. In the summer of 2025, the Community Council began exploring practical, community-led ways to address the challenges, with a focus on long-term behaviour change rather than short-term fixes.

Building on this early work, the concept was invited to be presented at a national gull summit in Inverness in September 2025, hosted by NatureScot alongside Scotland’s Agriculture Minister, Jim Fairlie. The positive response helped shape the campaign into a structured pilot, designed to test how education, public awareness and community engagement could work together to reduce conflict between people and urban wildlife.

Today, the pilot is being led by the St Andrews Community Council in collaboration with Fife Council and a growing network of local and national stakeholders. While rooted in St Andrews and North East Fife, the ambition is to develop a model that could be rolled out more widely across Scotland if proven successful.