Bird Watcher telling dog walkers to leave their dog's poo

[SpikyCoconut]

We have a local woman who's always out and about in nature spots with binoculars and other equipment doing her hobby of watching birds.

She tells dog walkers often to leave their dog's poo rather than picking it up, as it attracts a certain type of fly which is what certain birds eat, thus encouraging birds to be in the area, breed, thrive.

What do you think about this?

I'm not sure-she seems very knowledgeable and of course we have to take care of our wildlife, but for obvious reasons I am not sure having poo laying around (and it being illegal!) is a good idea?

In fairness, this is mostly in lesser-popular areas, wooded areas that are mostly quiet in terms of foot traffic rather than in the middle of the street.

Or dogshit...

not rural enough I suppose.
The most rural of areas still need you to pick up, bag and take your dog poo away with you. Very rural areas still have an ecosystem, livestock, wildlife and people in equal need of protection and consideration. The location does not alter the level of dangerous pollution caused by all dog poo.

The rule of thumb should be, if you wouldn't dream of leaving dog poo in your flowerbeds or on your lawn, on the pavement outside a primary school or on the grass verge outside your house, don't leave it in the countryside or woodland.

Dog poo (and urine) also adds a lot of nutrients to the area, especially in heavily used areas. This encourages more vigorous plant species at the expense of less common, more specialist species which prefer low nutrient conditions. So best to remove the poo just on that basis.

I completely fail to understand why people bag it and then hang the bags on trees and bushes. Totally idiotic behaviour.

I don't understand idiots who do this either!

The woman's a nutcase.

I'm quite sure both fly and bird evolved over millions of years to cope with a lack of dog shit.

We stick and flick in our local woodland.

Obviously pick it up and bag it elsewhere.

It should be picked up and bagged in your woodland too. It's not good for the wildlife or flora.

The only reason they encourage stick and flick is because otherwise lots of people bag it and leave it in the woods. They see it as the lesser of two evils - but far better if you just do what you'd normally do and take it away.

I find it bonkers that people seem to have been convinced that "stick and flick" is acceptable in woods/rural areas tbh!

Forestry England clearly state on their website: "Bag and bin your dog's waste"

https://www.forestryengland.uk/dog-code

Oh and here's the countryside code for dogs:

"Always clean up your dog’s poo because it can cause illness in people, livestock and wildlife."

https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/en_GB/countryside-code-dogs/

There is no such thing as a place that is 'rural enough' that it's fine to leave your dog's shit there. Regardless of whether you flick off the path or not. Take it away!

But they don’t say that in their woods. Perhaps they should make up their minds.

The only reason that "stick and flick" gets promoted is because they have issues with people bagging it and then leaving the bags, and flicking it is preferable to thag.

It's a response to the appalling behaviour of many dog owners, but good dog owners should be doing neither.

@blossomtoes - But now you know better, I assume you will stop flicking it?

I don’t flick it in the woods now - because I haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of finding it in the undergrowth. Dogs have been shitting in the depths of the countryside for centuries.

Re Forestry England, one of the New Forest rangers told me recently that they now know that the fox population has rocketed because otherwise sickly individuals were surviving on a diet of dog poo. More foxes means fewer ground nesting birds, some of which were already endangered.

I am a well practised stick and flicker but I've now changed to picking up.

Dogs have been shitting in the depths of the countryside for centuries.

There are far more pet dogs around today than there have been in the past. The population size is too big to just "do what we did in the past"

Also - humans used to just chuck their excrement out of the windowinto the street. We stopped, because we realised that it spreads disease. If we know something is harmful, we should stop doing it.

I think that I would contact RSPB and ask for proper advice.
I've just come back from walking my twithead.
I picked up another random solid.
Dogshite is rank

The difference now is that people are much more mobile. Cars mean that so many more dogs are being brought out into the countryside on leisure walks. This wasn't the case even 50 years ago, never mind for centuries.

Dog ownership also seems to have exploded in recent years, with the BBC reporting that 3.2 million pets - not all dogs of course - were bought during lockdown alone. The last estimate I saw was that there are about 12 million dogs in the UK.

That's a lot of dog poo in the here and now of 2023, much of it being left behind in our countryside and woodland.

Nothing would make me not pick up my dog’s poop

Any dog walker that foes as she asks is breaking the law.

Plus it looks horrible, it is unhygienic and a nightmare for anyone on foot or with a pram or in a wheel chair if they don't notice it until it is too late.

I'm saying this as a dog owner.

Hmm I work in a wildlife-based job and I've never heard this. Pretty sure it's bollocks.

@Mydogisagentleman I might do that! Good idea.