PPC116 | Training

Nick Burnham is Senior Wildlife Officer for the Royal Parks in London. PPC recently caught up with him to chat about his role and how pest control plays an important part.

I’ve worked for The Royal Parks just over a year now. I studied Zoology, with some elements of conservation biology, at Sheffield University, and I knew that I wanted to go into a wildlife-related field.

I wasn’t a child that looked in ponds for wildlife, digging up dirt from a young age, but I liked biology at secondary school and my passion grew from there.

After university I did a bit of work at the London Wetland Centre, run by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. Then I started at London Zoo with an engagement role, giving tours and talks about wildlife, which was really useful to learn about the site.

And then I started volunteering on the keeper team and an apprenticeship role came up and I went from there.

The zoo is in Regents Park, so I was working within a Royal Park but not directly for them. I did that for about five years or so and then, as much as I enjoyed that, I wanted to venture into working with more native species.

The role of Wildlife Officer came up within the Royal Parks, which sounded perfect to me. Working for the zoo was incredibly interesting, and I got to do things like work with the primates and I absolutely loved them. But part of me realised there’s a lot of incredible wildlife in the UK, particularly the bird life. 

We have some wonderful mammals, like pine martens, but I’m definitely a fan of our native bird life. My favourites are probably the great crested grebes, I think they’re really cool. We have a couple that breed in Saint James’s Park and I love their colours, the way they court one another, the babies are all stripey and look really pretty.

“I took my Level 2 course with BPCA, which I just learned that I’ve passed.”

Royal Parks? What?

The Royal Parks is made up of eight London parks – St James’s Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Regents Park, Greenwich Park, Richmond Park, The Green Park and Bushy Park – plus Brompton Cemetary.

The Royal Parks is a charity, and has been since 2017. Prior to that it was part of the civil service. Rather than get funding from the government now, which you have to spend in that financial year, they can keep it and spend it as necessary. The bulk of the income comes from events like those at Hyde Park, such as the summertime festivals, Winter Wonderland, big gigs and so on.

The idea behind it is to futureproof London’s green spaces, in terms of resilience to climate change. It’s also about making amazing green spaces for people’s mental wellbeing. It became particularly apparent during Covid-19 how important that is. And, as capital cities go, London is really green compared to a lot of others, which I think is great.

I work in the inner parks, but Richmond Park and Bushy Park are a little bit further out and they have their own wildlife officers who also manage the deer population. They have more of a gamekeeper role too.

It’s such a nice place to work; I’ll come into central London on the tube where it’s all hustle and bustle, then I go to the park and it’s more peaceful and lovely.

Being the Royal Parks, we are very connected with the Royals and the ceremonial events that happen, particularly where I am in St James’s Park because you’ll have trooping the colour, the King’s birthday parade etc. We had the coronation last year, the funeral the year before and the guard changes every other day and that shuts the road.

That does bring restrictions with it but it’s a unique place to work. You’ll be bird ringing or walking around the lake to the sounds of bagpipes or drums or trumpets.

Day-to-day life of a wildlife officer

My role is quite seasonal. I predominantly monitor a lot of the water bodies around the park for signs of sick and injured birds. We’ve got a lot of non-native geese, we’ve got ground nesting geese, we’ve got greylags, and a lot of Canada geese as well. 

We’ve got swans, a lot of nesting signets around this time [spring] in particular. 

Every afternoon I feed the pelicans that are in St James’s Park. We’ve had pelicans as part of the park since 1664, when they were given as a gift to King Charles II from the Russian ambassador.

St James’s and Regents Park also have a collection of exotic wildfowl as well, and we have six eastern white pelicans. 

I look after them, make sure they’re not injured, feed them every day and corral them when they go walkabout. Today they walked into the road and stopped the traffic, so I had to go and get them back. Every now and then they leave the park, and I have to go and get them back, which is entertaining. 

And if there’s an injured animal in the central parks, I tend to get a phone call.

Pest control in the parks

The Royal Parks are obviously big, open green spaces, which is a tough environment for pest control. There are a number of challenges we have to address: non-target species, water bodies, high footfall, dogs and so on. 

We work with Beaver, a BPCA member, when there’s a large infestation or a difficult situation, plus myself and another wildlife officer deal with some of the smaller issues. 

Beaver has been really good; helping us with a few training courses and we did a night shoot, so they let me come along and shadow that.

There are always going to be some pests here. We have a number of cafes throughout the parks, plus we do get public feeding. As food gets dropped on the ground, some unwanted guests are attracted – it’s a never ending battle.

We use a lot of methods that don’t involve toxic control wherever we can, particularly in the open spaces, although it’s not always feasible. In the parks that are able to close or have non-public areas, we have carried out shoots and things like that.

Sometimes, when you see a wasp nest or rats or whatever, they’re not necessarily a pest if they’re in certain parts of the park. A lot of times people ask me to come and destroy something and I’ll say no, because it’s somewhere that isn’t presenting a risk to anyone.

We don’t control pigeons at the moment. It’s something we’ve thought about, but given where we are, if we control a certain number a new population will just come back in and replace them.

“There are always going to be some pests here. We have a number of cafes throughout the parks, plus we do get public feeding. As food gets dropped on the ground, some unwanted guests are attracted – it’s a never ending battle.”

The tourists that stayed

We also see a lot of parakeets in the parks now, they are spreading like wildfire. Maybe 10-15 years ago there weren’t that many in central London, they started off in and around the south of the city.

They hit Richmond Park and Bushy Park first, but now they’re all over the central parks. They stand out quite a lot because they’re very noisy and incredibly colourful. A lot of people do tend to really like them because they’re a little bit exotic.

We don’t know exactly how destructive they can be yet, so we don’t actually manage their populations at the moment, but we try our best to discourage feeding and raise awareness about it.

It might be something we’d have to look at further down the line, to see how we control their numbers.

Grey squirrels are hard to control, but we’ve got a few islands that have really important ground nesting birds and we’ll kind of target hotspots where we don’t want any squirrels causing damage.

It’s tough because people come to parks to see wildlife. But some of this wildlife doesn’t technically belong here and can cause certain issues.

As an example, we have a very high number of geese due to feeding and that can affect the water quality of the lakes in the parks.

To combat this, we’re looking at different management plans and what we can do. That could be restricting access to the lake, adding more reed beds and so on.

Taking the lead 

I took my Level 2 course with BPCA, which I just learned that I’ve passed. I could have not done it and just carried on using a contractor for everything. However there’s always been elements that we’ve done ourselves and, particularly in the last two years, the parks have done a lot more bringing roles in house.

One of those aims is to bring pest control under our banner and train other staff up too. We have a good working relationship with Beaver and would definitely still use them for some things.

But the benefit of being able to do it yourself is that we know the parks better than anyone. The knowledge of the areas and the wildlife is there and it can get complicated without that. 

What’s to come?

We are aware of the Asian hornet that’s coming into the UK now. I know it’s been a big problem in France. We’ve got a few ID sheets that I actually got from PestEx the other day. We’re trying to pass them out around the parks and just get a bit more awareness on that. 

We do have a biodiversity team that’s keeping an eye on the squirrel contraceptive programme that’s going on and seeing the feasibility of implementing that down the line.

And the big master plan is about making the lakes more wild. Traditionally the Royal Parks have been very Victorian. You’ve got a big concrete promenade, a square lake that isn’t really good for wildlife at all. We’re trying to rewild as much as we can which, in my view, is very exciting.

I’m also excited to continue this pest control journey as part of my role. It’s always going to be a challenge in the parks, but it’s an interesting field. I went to PestEx in March and it’s a community I’m quite new to but has been welcoming. I’ll definitely go back next time and I’ll be encouraging more of my colleagues to do the same.