Martin Mere Wetland Centre

I visited this centre near Southport for the first time yesterday. It’s divided into two parts; beautifully landscaped waterfowl gardens where they have over a hundred species of ducks, geese, swans and flamingos (and beavers!), and a 150 hectare mere.

At dusk, lines and lines of noisy geese return from the day’s foraging. After wheeling around in great circles a few times, they land on the water for the night. It’s a spectacular sight and despite the noise and apparent chaos it felt quite peaceful too.

I had mixed feelings about the landscaped gardens, however. In contrast to the mere, where wild birds are free to come and leave, and indeed arrive from hundreds of kilometres away, the gardens are a place of captivity for birds which will never see anything of the world outside the centre. The environment is beautifully designed and maintained, and it was a treat to see so many different waterfowl close up and completely tame. But the only reason the birds are there is because they have all had one wing deliberately mutilated soon after hatching, so that they can never fly.

Is this morally right? The Centre makes great play of the fact that many of the birds are endangered in the wild. They also argue that the birds ‘wouldn’t breed if they weren’t happy’, and that it is better than keeping them enclosed with nets. But these birds are flying creatures. It’s an intrinsic behaviour in a duck. It doesn’t seem right that they are reduced to walking all their lives.