"Re-Introduction"

 It is a FACT that English, Welsh and Scottish wild cats were hunted to extinction. At a meeting of Scottish zoologists in 1898 one of the speakers was a man who had studied Scottish wild cats for 40 years. He declared that the wild cat had become extinct decades before and the 1860s was decided and agreed upon.

What you see in museums are not wild cats but hybrids of European wild cats. What are being financed and released are nothing more than hybrid European wild cats.

These cats are raised wild before release, but face the same threats such as cars or shooting and trapping on estates. They cannot be guarded 24/7 and you can bet the odd shooter who considers his/herself a 'sports' person is going to be out looking for one. The shooting community long ago share locations of where the releases would take place.

They want to introduce lynx and wolves back to Scotland and while lynx have survived in Scotland and even England in recent times (officially 1920s-1930s) they were all shot. Back in the 1990s an escaped arctic fox was shot by a farmer because "it looked unusual". Same decade in Shropshire a moron farmer shot an escaped ring tailed lemur because "it was an unusual animal"

There are far too many people in the UK who love to go out with rifles (often in groups) to shoot whatever they can find for 'fun' and they could not care less that the fox population has dropped by 60% -the old hunts had the same view: "We MUST have our sport".

The law states that a fox can be "dealt with" if a threat to livestock. Foxes in urban areas hunting rats and similar are no threat but who cares? We do know that in some areas off duty police officers take part in the 'sport' when they should be stopping it as unnecessary killing of wildlife (not to mention pets and the occasional live stock).

As I have gotten older so my stance has changed. The UK is not an animal loving set of countries and government legislation as well as local authorities do all they can to allow developers to destroy habitat while not caring about the mass of wildlife shot or killed by cars.

I would NEVER support the introduction of any species to replace one humans have made extinct. History has shown those species would only be targeted again.

Extinction is forever