According to Chambers English dictionary “to protect” is “to shield from danger, injury, change, capture, loss: to defend: to strengthen.” Quite a number of wild mammals in the UK have some degree of legal protection. The actual levels of protection vary from species to species and country to country. Some protections are laid down internationally and some nationally. Over the next few weeks we will be blogging about these levels of protection and assessing how effective they actually are. Our previous post about the revised status of mountain hare in Scotland suggests that in some cases the label “Protected Species” is a complete misnomer.