Keep aviary open to help mental health, MP says
BBCAn aviary which is threatened with closure after a council cut its support and declared it "inhumane" should stay open due its benefits for mental health, the local MP has said.
The Botanic Gardens in Churchtown, Southport, will shut in March 2027 after Sefton Council said it would no longer supply about £60,000 in annual running costs.
Council leader Marion Atkinson later told a meeting that the facility was "no longer in the best interests of the animals" and animal welfare experts have supported the closure.
But Southport MP Patrick Hurley said closing the aviary could create "an upstream issue around mental health provision" and it might "actually be a false economy" to shut it.
Hurley told BBC Radio Merseyside the aviary and its gardens, which are home to 170 birds and small animals, were "really loved" by the community and the closure was a health and wellbeing issue.
"So many people have said the aviary has really helped them with their mental health," he said.
"If we close it, is there going to be an upstream issue around budgets in adult social care?
"Is there going to be an upstream issue around mental health provision?
"It might actually be a false economy by closing this."
He said it might end being a case of when "you squeeze the balloon in one area and the air comes out somewhere else".
Hurley comments came after a public meeting, which was attended by about 200 people.
He said it might end being a case of when "you squeeze the balloon in one area and the air comes out somewhere else".
Hurley comments came after a public meeting, which was attended by about 200 people.
Atkinson has previously said the decision to close the aviary was not about money but taken because such enclosures were "unnatural" and "inhumane".
She told a public meeting in July that nobody was "calling into question the care and kindness shown by staff and volunteers to these birds over the decades, but the fact remains this facility is simply no longer in the best interests of the animals who are kept there".
Animal rights charity Peta and international wildlife charity Born Free have voiced support for the closure.
Peta's Dr Carys Bennett said birds were not "ornaments to be displayed".
"Confining them with little stimulation does not respect animals' best interests, or meet their social, psychological or physical needs," she said.
Leading veterinary surgeon Dr Emma Milne said keeping birds in aviaries was "fundamentally wrong".
"Caging birds and restricting flight and social needs can't be justified unless for clinical need," she said.
"Add to this the exposure to people and the stress that may cause and it's easy to stand behind any initiative that seeks to close these establishments."
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