The Answer is Kill It. Now What’s the Question?

Over recent months some of us have been reviewing the reactions by various farming, shooting and gamekeeping organisations in response to problems with wildlife. With a single exception their response has always been the same. Kill it!

Vaccination, better bio-security and decent testing barely score in the fight against bovine Tb. The answer to the problem is to kill more badgers.

The mountain hare, an iconic species has every appearance of being in decline. The response from the game shooting industry and its acolytes. Kill them.

Beaver have been returned to the Raver Tay catchment in Scotland (albeit unlawfully). In some places they are creating problems. The response. Kill them.

It looks as if there is a move afoot to remove the limited protection afforded to the pine marten. The response from some so called ‘guardians of the countryside’. Great we’ll soon be able to kill them.

The list goes on and on. Foxes. hen harriers, buzzards, etc etc. The only exception is deer. When a deer cull to protect forestry was suggested the reaction for Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) became even more hysterical than usual. And those who know the SGA will realise just how hysterical that must have been! Just to reassure anyone who thinks the SGA have gone soft and to protect their reputation in the shooting world we should explain that they are not actually against killing deer per se. They just want to do it themselves.

To be fair to these shooting folk they are keen to help to save the red squirrel and the water vole. Happily for them this involves killing grey squirrels and mink.

We began to wonder if these folk have any other response to any wildlife problem other than killing something. To judge from some of the individual comments on social media to problems with hare coursers, travelers, wild campers, walkers with dogs etc etc there is a great deal of barely suppressed anger, desperate to find an instant, and often violent solution to almost any problem. Killing people is illegal and results in serious trouble. Killing animals often isn’t and rarely results in any trouble even when it is.