The TIMES reports on Michael Gove ordering the killing of sick squirrels and deer.  It could be Michael Gove’s biggest and bravest mistake, they say. The environment secretary has told animal care and wildlife rescue centres that sick or abandoned grey squirrels or muntjac deer brought in by the public can no longer be released back into the wild and must be killed.

This upcoming news was raised by Nigel Palmer at his talk on Harper Asprey Wildlife Rescue to our Friends of Normandy Wildlife group in January 2019. Read more on his talk here.

Photo by Denis Fournier under Creative commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

The GUARDIAN reports that Britain’s carnivores must survive government culls, gamekeepers, poisoning, persecution and increasingly busy roads but, in modern times at least,  they have never had it so good: badger, otter, pine marten, polecat, stoat and weasel populations have “markedly improved” since the 1960s, according to a new study. The otter, polecat and pine marten have bounced back from the brink of extinction, and the country’s only carnivorous mammal now in danger of being wiped out is the wildcat, with the dwindling Scottish populations hit by hybridisation with domestic and feral cats.