?Is It Possible To Educate People on Wildlife>

 

Local wildlife groups in the UK tend to have no interest in foxes or badgers unless there are photo opportunities.  They will not come out and say it but badgers and foxes are seen as "not very pretty" mammals.   Take a few fun facts by the Badger Trust put out on its Face Book page:

 "Here are today's facts: Badgers are excellent ecosystem engineers.  Badgers contribute to habitat heterogeneity*. Their setts create homes for other wildlife, such as foxes, mice, and rabbits."

The only comments after this -why were these people on a badger group??- were wholly negative with this being typical:

"I'm sure the local hedgehogs and ground nesting birds are pleased about that ."

Not one, not two but four similar comments and one can only assume these people are very uneducated of deliberately trolling wildlife pages. Both are highly likely.  I did, however, as the Badger Trust is far too polite, respond:

"Just to the posters above: over 300,000 badgers have been 'legally' killed based on nonsense science. We lose up to 100,000 a year on roads (I keep the local badger death register) and if the cull and traffic losses continue by the 2030s badgers will be rare or gone altogether. 

"The fox population is in steep decline (I keep the fox deaths register also and run the Fox Deaths Project) and so far in Bristol a;lone (and REPORTED) we have gone over 109 foxes and cubs. And this year's cub losses are concerning."

" When it comes to hedgehog, fox, badger or any other species decline stop scapegoating other animals.  

"I have observed foxes and hedgehogs eating together and well fed badgers rarely chase around hedgehogs (after 50 years a field naturalist I've studied wildlife interactions as well as wildlife-pet interactions).  

The biggest threat to any wildlife is simply humans. 

I am guessing by the above comments that we have a contingent of fox and badger haters?  Research the subject and understand what is going on -unless you prefer even more UK wildlife extinctions?"

I ought to point out that bounties were paid for killing hedgehogs into the 20th century and after that cars, slug pellets, rodenticides and all manner of other human created problems are the factors that drove the hedgehog to be listed as endangered. They survived larger populations of foxes and badgers for many thousands of years and survived until humans.

You can try to educate but sheer ignorance as well as a very strange and illogical hatred -similar to that from anti pet cat, anti dog, anti fox and anti badgers and even anti muntjac deer- exists. More than once I was told by bird watchers that they would prefer any threat to birds to become extinct as that was far more preferable to losing some birds each year; it is one reason why red squirrels are still killed in areas; as a threat to nesting birds.

I sometimes think people in the UK cannot be educated on wildlife.