The sight of parakeets flying around certain areas of London is becoming almost as common as seeing squirrels or foxes. In Greenwich, they are very common especially in the parks and along the railway track treetops.
The government has announced that they are looking to cull the wild parakeets as they are not native to the British isle and as such are decimating the natural ecosystem by dominating the smaller native birds.

I personally love seeing the brightly coloured parakeets flying about outside my window especially in the summer. They brighten up the place. I would like to see maybe a partial culling that would not destroy the whole parakeet population but maybe keep them to a level where they do not impact so much on the native smaller birds. I’m no expert, so this may not be feasible.

In a way, I can understand the governments position as these birds are native to mainly Australia, South America, and parts of South Asia and not the UK. During the last century, grey squirrels were introduced to the British isles from North America and this has had disastrous consequences for the native red squirrels, which were driven to almost extinction by the more aggressive grey squirrels.
Similarly, when the non-native rabbits were introduced to Australia they found that the rabbits bred like….well rabbits. This spelled disaster for the farmers crops which the rabbits feasted on like there was no tomorrow.
The Australian rabbit problem got so bad that the Australian army and prospecting bounty hunters were called in to try and eliminate the devastation they were causing. Although the problem is now contained the rabbits are still in abundance on the subcontinent of Australia, a testimony to the endurance of mother nature over man.

In the case of the British parakeet problem, the birds were not introduced on purpose but were caused by numerous escaped parakeets escaping from the confinement of cages to which parakeets are not meant to endure, so they will attempt to escape at any opportunity. These free wild birds then managed to congregate and breed.
I’m still amazed they manage to breed so fast and managed to adapt to our climate so easily but that is just what they have done.
Whether it is accidentally escaped birds or the intended introduction of a non-native species to a country to solve another problem, the final problem of non-native species destroying the ecosystem or the native species is always the fault of humans who do not think enough of the long term consequences of their actions.