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).