Re-establishing the natural balance - UK

[Toddy]

I can always tell when the hawk is about. The wee birds go absolutely silent, and they coorie down on the ground, huddled tight to the grass. The ones in the hedge don't move, and the pigeons who know they're on a hiding to nothing on the ground, sit still but with their heads moving sideways trying to see it coming. They're fast when flying, but they've to get up there before the hawk, and that's usually when it takes them down.
That very white pigeon stood out among the usual lavender grey ones. A born cull as they used to say.

M

 

[dannyk64]

A step in the right direction! The Grey's are a real pest.

Something needs to be done to reduce the deer populations. Current culling is barley putting a dent in them. Every week I see the damage these creatures do to young but established crops of trees (as well as older ones!) It isn't their fault it's their nature but they are just to many in number.

Despite the problems of reintroducing their native predators I can't currently see any other way to restore the ecological balance without a lot more funding and even more PR work.

Sent from my BV8000Pro using Tapatalk

 

[Broch]

One wonders how mankind has ever been responsible for a species extinction by hunting!

There are estimated to be 2.5 million grey squirrels in the UK. There are estimated to be 6 million air rifles in the UK. Would an average of three air rifles per owner be reasonable? So, if everyone went out tomorrow and shot one or two grey squirrels, theoretically, there would be no grey squirrels.

I am not advocating this. It's entirely possible that the grey now supports some wildlife or habitat in the UK now and exterminating it may be detrimental to something else - for example what would the pine martins turn to? No, the real problem is a political one - as far as the majority of townies are concerned they're cute and the only mammalian wildlife they see!

 

[daveO]

One wonders how mankind has ever been responsible for a species extinction by hunting!

Humans have also caused species extiction through conservation. Apparently no one thought that individual species might have their own species of parasites and when last ditch captive breeding programs deloused the last surviving animals they accidently wiped out the last surviving parasites that came with them.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2014/11/20/conservation_biologists_drove_two_species_to_extinction_california_condor.html

 

[daveO]

You couldn't do it if you tried.
I see that most everything in the UK is owned by somebody that you can name.
Trespass would choke off any sustained efforts.

I'd like to watch anyone with 1 or more air rifles( in locked cases) try to sneak out of London on a train.
Coming back with a sack of dead squirrels would be just as funny.

The problems with a squirrel cull are complex but I try and think about the UK ecology before man really got down to changing it. The landscape would have been mostly wetlands and woodlands with exposed upland areas. No livestock, no rabbits, no brown hares (I think mountain hares are thought to be native but correct me if I'm wrong) no grey squirrels, no mink, not even a brown rat. Basically very few mammals of that size. I imagine birds must have been prolific and filling a lot of niches that mammals now occupy. Today the landscape is very different and any human attempt to balance the ecology is basically trying to create an imagined sense of balance. 2.5million grey squirrels is a lot of biomass for the ecosystem if we got rid of them too quickly.

 

[Broch]

. 2.5million grey squirrels is a lot of biomass for the ecosystem if we got rid of them too quickly.

Agreed!

 

[Broch]

Before humankind, Britain was part of the European landmass, not an island, mainly ice covered, so all the big (and small) tundra animals were there.
Must have been a beautiful sight!

It's still a beautiful sight in many places

 

[daveO]

I'll predict that if you ever did eliminate the grey squirrels you would next have some overgrowing vegetation problem.
Birds by their nature and behaviour wouldn't have had much of a chance to compete with any mammals.

There must have been a great ebb and flow of species 10,00+ yrs ago during the most recent ice age.
Britain was connected to the continent by "Doggerland" yes? When sea levels were lower?
Might that imply extinctions at the hand of paleo man after the Ilse became isolated? Rats & rabbits?
What's in your paleo middens for bones?

I don't know if it was paleo but they've found bones of elephant and hippo under Trafalgar Square in London. The wildlife around here would have been very different at that time. Herbivores on a much larger scale and predators to match.

I need to do more reading into the history but as far as I understand it about 10,000 years ago we became an island and 'farming' didn't really start until after that. Quite what the place would have been like if we didn't drain the wetlands and clear the forests I don't know. Damp and leafy I suppose...

My problem with the rewilding debate is if we just take our hands off the wheel and let nature do what it wants would we end up with a better result than if we set a target and crafted the land back to a better state of health based on our current ecosystem. It's got to be better than creating these tiny pockets of land as nature reserves and then fencing them off because they're concentrated predator banquets.

 

[Broch]

My problem with the rewilding debate is if we just take our hands off the wheel and let nature do what it wants would we end up with a better result than if we set a target and crafted the land back to a better state of health based on our current ecosystem. It's got to be better than creating these tiny pockets of land as nature reserves and then fencing them off because they're concentrated predator banquets.

My problem with mankind 'deciding' is that we favour the 'beautiful' - if it was a choice between a slug and a butterfly we'd chose the butterfly, a red squirrel and a liverwort, we'd chose the red squirrel. We can see this all around us with our woodland management, wetland management, even our bird-box selection, everything we do is 'speciesist' - that is favours a species that we think is important without taking account of the cost of the little things, the things that lurk in dark corners.

We are past being able to let nature 'do it's own thing' in this country, but we need to take a much more system viewpoint - no single species deserves favour over another.

 

[Leshy]

Best thread on here by a long mile .
Loving all the discussion and the curiosities of faraway places.

Broch hits the nail on the head as well , with the man's preferential treatment of certain species for whatever reason, cuteness , scarcity, grace , beauty or usefulness.
I'm guilty of that too...
I love the Eagle owl , but I know that in many places they completely eliminate (hunt) all competition (harriers among other raptors) and therefore their reintroduction has been mostly controversial and fairly sparse.
I do understand the implications but I'd still like to see more breeding pairs being reintroduced...

As well as a growing population of the reds and a dramatic reduction in the number of greys ...
Pine martens are wonderful creatures, vicious little b*$7@#ds , but such amazing hunting skills....

An interesting point was made about the deer population being out of control.
Muntjac is rife around here and despite having a all year round open season on them for being an invasive species , it seems the population keeps growing and thriving .
No end in sight , and muntjac and other deer continue to thrive in large numbers .

I haven't personally seen the detrimental effect that deer has on our ecosystem , or if this is a real concern, but I must admit I take great pleasure in bumping into a group of deer and observing them jumping away from us when they finally spot / hear us.
I saw a documentary a few years ago about the VERY successful reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone national park to counter the destruction caused by the elimination of the wolves in the park .
The flora and the rivers along with their ecosystem, was being destroyed at an alarming rate by a growing population Elk .

The ecosystem balanced itself within just a few years (which is amazing) and now the original natural balance and bio diversity of the park has been restored.
Beavers came back on their own and everything ...

I can't find the original documentary but I found this :

I know that England is way too overpopulated to reintroduce wolves in most places but I wonder if we really have that much of a deer problem? and if so what would be a plausible solution for this?

 

[Lou]

Beavers are a keystone species. They can irrigate valleys that have dried up and manage the land so that many other species can flourish alongside them although they have a tough time living alongside humans in America and elsewhere as they can change the course of rivers towards towns and industries.

Wolves have finally reached us here in the Alps but they have had little impact on deer numbers I believe, locals say that they go for sheep instead. Yet again, it's just too populated here for this species to live happily side by side with humans. We do have lots of beavers living behind our local supermarket though and nobody minds them.

 

[Broch]

Nah, will never happen, stalking is big business in the UK.
It's ironic that in a small island that claims to have a deer problem (and I believe it) the cost of venison is ridiculously high (unless, of course, you have Toddy's contacts )

 

[fenix]

On a separate note, when I was at uni we visited a variety of wildlife reserves, parks, etc around Hampshire. Most were managed for general wildlife, but the ones managed for a single species could be pretty unforgiving. Then again group like the RSPB and SNH tend to be pretty quiet about there predator control policies, there was that hedgehog control thing in Scotland while ago, and gul nest were removed and poison was used to promote terns.

 

[C_Claycomb]

The natural balance of this thread got out of kilter. It started with something very specific to the UK, but quickly migrated west with three folk filling four pages just between themselves, mostly about North America and Guam, but even the bits related to the UK were through a North American lens.

While a lot that was said was interesting, it wasn't a comfortable cohabitation with the original material of the thread. So there has been a cull. Some posts have been moved, some have been removed.

This is now for UK based folk to carry on about UK and European matters. There is a second thread, with all the posts about the Americas and other exotica over in Fair Game, where it has been moved due to the drift to hunting and pictures of dead things.

 

[Toddy]

Thinking on this, I realised that the folks most likely to be at the front lines aren't always the environmentalists, but the pest control specialists.
So I had a quick wander through the net, and I found not only the UK's but the EU (we're still part, and though we're on islands off shore from the continent, and don't have all of the pest species, it's still an interesting list) pest list, but also the British Pest Control Association.

The latter have an article on the grey squirrel this month, and the maps show just how much ground the red squirrel has lost and would need to recolonise.
https://bpca.org.uk/News-and-Blog/Pest-watch/pestwatch-squirrels/194844

That site also has a link to a DEFRA consultation that is due to end 3/4/2018, so less than a month to respond.
https://bpca.org.uk/News-and-Blog/P...-the-invasive-alien-species-regulation/191853

Thankfully our temperate climate limits some of the things on the EU list, and makes me very glad that we are islanders
http://www.nonnativespecies.org/index.cfm?sectionid=7

The UK Government's NNS strategy and INNS strategies can be found here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...26/gb-non-native-species-strategy-pb14324.pdf

(NNS & INNS = Non Native Species and Invasive Non Native Species)

I know folks who were involved in removing the hedgehogs from the Western Isles, and others who have been working to remove rhododendrons, Himalayan balsam, etc.,
I know it's work, but for folks who can't find space to get out easily, it's a good way to get involved, it's a good way to do something productive in the open air, and a good way to get to spaces that otherwise might be restricted access.....besides one can eat grey squirrels, Himalayan balsam seeds, signal crayfish, etc., too

M

 

[Broch]

Going back to the very topic of this thread - I wonder if it has anything to do with colour. We know that a number of animal species cannot see well in the red spectrum; maybe the greys stand out in the pine martin's eye compared to the reds.

just a thought

 

[Broch]

On the subject of introduced species in the UK - I've just had the bad news that Muntjac (or rather a Muntjac) has been seen in the woods on the other side of the valley from our woodland. We do not currently have a deer problem and, in reality, a small amount of grazing is unlikely to be too much of a problem (we already get the odd half dozen ewes find their way through the fences each year) but I'll have to keep an eye open over the next few years.

 

[Toddy]

Can those muntjac not be classed as vermin ? There's no closed season on them, I know that. Just think on them like huuuuge rabbits, and don't keep the meat hanging around long. Fresh, hung but not overhung, venison smells just like beef roasting......I did some last week, a neighbour told me that my roast smelled like a lovely Sunday Himself was quite happy with it anyway, he doesn't do 'rare' or 'gamey' meat. Sneaky beasts by all accounts. If they turn up round here, there'll be a lot of dinners I reckon.

Interesting article here about the pest species (red squirrels aren't good eating apparently )
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/apr/14/ruralaffairs.politicsphilosophyandsociety

 

[Toddy]

Going back to the very topic of this thread - I wonder if it has anything to do with colour. We know that a number of animal species cannot see well in the red spectrum; maybe the greys stand out in the pine martin's eye compared to the reds.

just a thought

On that note though, have you noticed just how many of the British fauna have a lot of red in their colouration ? the grey squirrels are darker rusty backed, and even we do too. Lot of reddish in the British Isles.

M

 

[daveO]

Welsh mountain sheep are definitely more of a problem in terms of grazing things they shouldn't around here. I get so annoyed seeing them loose in nature reserves. We get low numbers of roe deer but unless you'd seen them you'd never know they'd been around.