The Times and iNews report Chris Packham has backed the shooting of deer to stop the sound of the nightingale being silenced in the countryside. The BBC TV wildlife presenter said that deer culling was necessary to stop the steep decline in one of the nation’s favourite songbirds.
Nightingale numbers have fallen by 90 per cent since the 1960s and there are now fewer than 5,500 breeding pairs in the UK.
The Sunday Telegraph reports Natural England has been accused of bowing to badger rights campaigners after setting farmers the “impossible task” of proving the cull poses no risk to ground nesting birds.
The row comes after Natural England lost its power to issue bird shooting licences amid a row with farmers who kill wild birds that attack livestock and decimate crops.
Photo by Tim Brookes under creative commons.
The BBC report rabbits have been hopping around the UK since the Roman period, experts have been able to scientifically prove for the first time.
Tests on a rabbit bone, found at Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, have shown the animal was alive in 1AD. The 1.6in (4cm) piece of a tibia bone was found in 1964 but it remained in a box until 2017, when a zooarchaeologist realised that it came from a rabbit. Academics believe the animal could have been kept as an exotic pet.
Photo by Steve Marlow under creative commons
The Telegraph reports that beavers have been reintroduced into a Yorkshire forest to tackle flooding as part of five year experiment.
On Wednesday Forestry England released a pair of Eurasian beavers from Scotland to Cropton Forest to determine whether the creatures can slow floodwater by building dams, the first trial of its kind ever undertaken. It follows a project in nearby Pickering which showed that building artificial dams can have a major impact on rising water levels.
Photo by Pat Gaines under creative commons
The Guardian reports that the deer population in the UK is at the highest it has been for at least 1,000 years, at around two million. Over the past few decades, does and stags have been spotted in urban areas and villages around the UK, from Glasgow, to Sheffield and London.
This week, the Royal Horticultural Society released guidance on how gardeners can deer-proof their outdoor spaces. Replace tulips with daffodils and red hot pokers, it suggests, because deer don’t like the taste and it will stop them rummaging through your flowerbeds.
So how did deer come to wander into our back gardens? For a start, population growth. Accurate data on exact deer numbers is scarce because the animals are secretive with a significant range. However, there is evidence that numbers of red, roe and muntjac deer are increasing.
The BBC report that two schoolgirls have criticised a housing developer for the “devastating impact” its use of hedgerow netting is having on wildlife.
Taylor Wimpey attached netting to a hedge lining a 270-home development in Warwickshire to stop birds from nesting but did so before plans were passed.
Kyra Barboutis and Sophie Smith, who run hedgehog rescue centres, said the hibernating animals would be trapped.
Taylor Wimpey said it would now build tunnels enabling them to escape.
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.
The Telegraph tells how grey squirrel is on the menu, as diners turn to the wild meat to help boost the number of red squirrels.
Everybody who cares about wildlife will be gathering in central London on 22nd September 2018 for the first People’s Walk for Wildlife. And we know you care about wildlife because your reading this, so please join us there.
Watch this short video for one of the most passionate and yet down to earth explanations of why we have to wake up to what is happening to British wildlife and act. Chris Packham says of our wildlife population’s downward trends “those statistics about those declines become normalised. Like it’s just another part of the conversation”.
He continues “We’re in trouble, we’re in big trouble…… It’s time for us to act. I think it’s time for us to stand up and be counted, and to ask, politely, for things to be fixed”.
Please join this polite, passive walk (it’s not a demonstration or rally) and show your concern for what is happening to our wildlife – whether your interest is for birds, hedgehogs, dragonflies, ferns, trees, fungi or any other of the diverse, beautiful and essential plants and animals that keep our environment healthy.
If your interested in going and want to travel by train with other members of FNW please let me know so we can co-ordinate travel arrangements or arrange to meet in London.
10am: Gather – Reformers Tree, Hyde Park, London
12 noon: Infotainment
1pm: Walk
2pm: Finish – Richmond Terrace
