The Internet Rarely Gets it Right

 

Regarding the previous posting about bounties on the Isle of Mull including for foxes and badgers I asked Google AI for information on foxes on Mull:

"There are no foxes on the Isle of Mull, a notable absence among Scottish islands, though they were reportedly hunted to extinction centuries ago, with pine martens filling a similar ecological niche today, often mistaken for foxes due to similar droppings. While you won't find native foxes, Mull boasts abundant wildlife like otters, deer, sea eagles, and various seabirds, making it a prime destination for nature lovers. "

"Centuries ago" so why were there bounties in the 19th century?

According to the Isle of Mull "wildlife on Mull"

"There are no foxes on Ulva and although the Vikings may have seen wolves (naming the island ‘Ullfur’ or ‘Wolf Island’) there have been none around lately."

They do not mention badgers and otters are a rare sight.  So it looks as though those bounties made foxes and badgers extinct on the island [if you read The Red Paper you will find that this may not be quite true].

What does this all prove? NEVER EVER trust an internet search as the AI is far from reliable  on even whether Thursday follows Wednesday and literally picks up bad info from online sources.  It also shows that whoever put the website together for Mull had no knowledge of the wildlife driven to extinction by islanders but then, not good publicity for an island.

Archive research whether newspapers, magazines and journals or books cannot be replace by very poor information on the internet that is copied and pasted  endlessly.

Sweden Stops Wolf Hunting ...hopefully permanently

 

When People Were Paid To Kill Wildlife

 

 Although hunts play a major part in wildlife extinctions it is very unpopular to correct dogma. As I am not looking for popularity let me correct major dogma. 

"It was the rich and upper classes that hunted and killed for fun and wiped out a lot of wildlife" 

Well, to an extent but along with all the well to do men and women were the normal every day folk who may well have killed for 'fun' but the main intention was to earn "easy money".  In The Red Papers I noted the various bounties paid for killing  foxes, badgers, otters and so on and these were bounties paid out all over the country. In The Scottish Annals of Natural History (1895) Vol 15 page 193:

Yes, everything could be killed including house (pet) cats and before anyone thinks that would be a rarity well 6d back then bought a lot and if you didn't like next door's moggy and you saw it walking about...easy pickings. Game keepers, of course, relished shooting anything but pet cats and pet dogs were included (there is a black joke, albeit factual, that gamekeepers always had great fruit and vegetable crops because of the "fertilizer" -cats and dogs they had shot).

So do not just blame organised and casual hunting for 'fun' but remember everyday ordinary folk killed off wildlife for fun and profit, too (motorists today kill off thousands of foxes, badgers,m otters, cats, dogs, deer and other species without even giving it a second thought so not much changes).