The Extermination of UK Wildlife HAS To Stop

 

AIV could -"could"- become a problem with foxes just as it could become a problem with badgers.

We have upward of 60-80,000 foxes killed on roads every year, added to which are deathjs through natural (illnesses) causes. If you add to this the unknbown number (estimated at 20,000) killed each year by people who go out to shoot and kill for 'fun' and illegal snaring you can see why the UK fox population is under stress and if this loss of foxes contin ue they may well become a rarity (don't worry -shooters will find something else to kill)/

This year the British Fox study has submitted over 30 foxes from the City of Bristol that met our "unusual death" criteria for the Fox Deaths Project -the only one of its kind in the UK. Because of lack of storage facilities we had to turn away another 30. These are only ones we get reported so 60+ is an artificially low number.

Hunting, obviously, still continues.

We are aware that a similar number of badgers (60-100,000) die on roads each year as well as through snaring, illegal shooting and poisoning (there is an admitted "brisk trade" in selling dead badgers to taxidermists -though no one will go on the record) and now we learn that 'legal' killing of a "protected species" is set to kill 200,000.

What bounties and melecide did not succeed in doing in the past it seems that His Majesty's Government may well achieve -reducing badgers toi odd relic populations spread around the country due to culling based on a lack of scientific evidence that badgers spread bovine TB. At the same time hunts run horse and hounds as well as foot tread through fields and meadows and probably spread the TB -figures on hounds and horses contracting TB are kept quiet and the infected horses and hounds can be disposed of easily.

At the same time we have to remember that "protected" otters can now be killed by farmers -legally.

After 50 years ofd seeing wildlife gradually reintroduced and returning to a once normal state I have now seen it decline due to inaccurate science as well as governments (the Tory governments being the worst offenders) letting a totally outdated 'sport' as well as wildlife crimes go unpunished.

We saw foxes pushed to extinction, just like the British wildcat, by the 1800s and that was after a couple centuries importing foxes/ The three ol;d fox types died out and so more foxes were imported and continued to be imported into the mid 20th century (and we now want to import European wild cats!). Badgers just survived as research has shown.

We cdannot allow the continued extermination of species in the UK just because it is 'fun' or palms have been greased. The UK needs a dedicated anti hunt police ynit that can prosecute and that includes on "private" land because wildlife does not belong to some wealthy person and we are the stewards of the nation's wildlife/habitat. Red squirrels are protected and the grey squirrel is blamed yet it is humans who wiped out the reds and today red squirrels are still killed in numbers by private forestry groups (businesses) as well as gamekeepers on the instructions of their bosses who also like to "pot a few".

It has to stop or the next generation are only going to see these animals on the internet or TV with some dry narrator telling them "If only something had been done. Now we have learnt our lesson it is too late"

EXTINCTION IS FOREVER