Fox and Badger Extinctions...or "Why Did Badgers NOT Become Extinct?"

 

Little Book of British Quadrupeds W May  1845 

A FOX-HUNTING ANTHOLOGY Selections from the Writers of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. 1928 by CUMING E D (Author) You can still find cheapish copies of and it is worth it since we learn:

"...we have the evidence of Ralph Holinshed, his Chronicles, published 1575 : he says of fox and badger :-

'We have some but no great store -such is te scarcity of them here in England- so earnestly are the inhabitants bent to root them out, that except it had been to bear thus with the recreation of their superiors- it could otherwise have been chosen but that they should have been utterly destroyed by many years agone."

Foxes were hunted for their fur in the winter when coats were more full and just this extract from 1575 totally destroys the entire "vermin control" excuse which was a convenient excuse but it is made very clear that this was then, as now for pleasure.

Foxes and badgers were becoming so rare in the 16th century that this immediately indicates the time when the 'sportsmen' must have been concerned for the "pastime".

Based on later writings I would guess that foxes may have been imported in the 16th century and that as they were so the huntsmen learnt how to keep, rear and maintain imported fox populations so that by the 17th century it was all established rather like any other form of animal keeping.

By the 18th century fox maintenance was an every day thing.

Little Book of British Quadrupeds W May 1845 (c)2023bBristol Badger group

The myth of "a nation of animal lovers" is more a 19th century invention as up to that time and beyond the regular people in the UK were still trapping, shooting, poisoning and clubbing wildlife for anything from a few pennies to a couple of shillings.

Even into the early 20th century bounties were paid for killing hedgehogs. And if you think that has stopped -it hasn't it's just part and parcel of a gamekeepers job where there are bi8rd shoots and ground nesting birds destined to be shot (a hedgehog might eat one of the eggs and deprive the 'sportsman' of a bird to kill). Cars, of course, killed many more. Slug pellets took care of others and who or what gets the blame for t5he hedgehog becoming an endangered species? The fox and the badger! Anything other than humans.

But a lot of questions are raised thanks to the old hunting/natural history books; hunting, even when they knew the Old foxes were dying out, continued, after all a chap had to have his 'fun' and so the door of Extinction opened then closed. Don't worry, there were thousands more imported to keep the 'sport' going but like the wolf our unique British foxes were gone forever.

It was declared in 1897 that the Scottish wildcat, which had continued for many centuries through breeding with feral domestic cats had become extinct by the 1860s. Naturalists and 'sportsmen' all knew this and yet, before the cat became extinct they still hunted and killed it for fun but using the excuse that it took ground birds -ground birds destined to be the focus of shooting 'sport'. There is even evidence that wildcats were let loose in areas licensed out for shooting in the 1920s but by this time we were looking at European wildcats and these imported cats, just after 1900, became the 'true' wildcat. This is why DNA of today's Scottish wild tabbies matches the DNA of European wild cats!

In The Red Paper (Felids) there is included evidence that wild cats survived in England and Wales if only in a hybridised form, into the 1930s. It should be noted that many naturalist-'sportsmen' write how they visited museums and saw on display no real wild cats just hybrids. The door of Extinction opened for the Old wild cat and then closed.

All of the accounts also declare how many areas were "finally free of badgers" -animals declared docile and of "no sporting value" as well as "harmless". The bounties, badger baiters, snarers and gamekeepers took care of badgers. Again, this continues until this day using the very convenient excuse of bovine TB spreading (while hunt packs and horses run freely through fields in which bovine TB exists/existed -we are not told how many hunt animals contract TB as those are quickly "given the bullet" and disposed of).

Apart from "killed to order" (for taxidermy) badgers there are the genuine road kills, snared, baited, shot and poisoned badgers. remember badgers are supposedly a 'protected species' but the killing continues.

The big question is this, and I wondered about this a great deal over the years: how did badgers avoid the open door to extinction? I can find no records of badgers being imported into the UK (which does not mean that they were not) so, based on many historical precedents, the badger should be extinct. Why isn't it?

Trawling through newspaper archives for the 19th century I found a small news item. Not even a long column but quite short. That led to another news item and...I discovered why badgers had not become extinct and also why so much badger DNA from around the UK matches up.

That is my current project. To once more stamp on natural history dogma and present facts so that this and future generations can read the truth and, I hope, learn from it to prevent even more extinctions that require importing replacements: the fox, the wild cat, red squirrel, hares and some deer species have already replaced the Old.