Countryfile

[pinfireman]

4 hours ago, JohnfromUK said:

Nature is an incredibly complex balancing act, a perpetually moving balance, but with great resilience.  Factors like hard winters, dry summers, gluts of certain fruits etc. all disturb the balance, but it recovers over a period.

Human intervention is usually far too clumsy t0 'fine tune', and so causes wild swings in the balance that can have wide ranging 'knock on' effects.

Nature also includes both what some will see as 'cruelty', but also great tenderness.

On the BBC, it has also brought us the great Sir David Attenborough, and in the past, the 'thoughtful' David Bellamy, who looked beyond the headlines and took an honest view based on facts.

Good point!

[oowee]

1 hour ago, Uilleachan said:

Where I am we've no shortage of hedgehogs nor have we a shortage of badgers, in fact we have an abundance of wildlife of all types across the board. We also have an abundance of habitat and very very little industrial agriculture. What we have of the latter is located in the sea, true to say it's not without issue regarding pollution and negative pressures on migratory game fish. But thats another story. 

I don't blame farmers nor do I blame the badger, in those areas of the country with little habitat wildlife is forced into the ever decreasing margins. That there's going to be a rebalancing of species is a simple fact of nature. 

The demise of the UK rural hedgehog won't be turned around by culling badgers, it's habitat they need. It's the same for all the flora and fauna of the UK. Blaming badgers is to treat a symptom rather than tackle the disease. 

  

I think this is the right way forward although not the only answer It's a balance of the issues habitat development and predator control. I just watch the CF program which was fairly balanced even if it finished with habitat control as the main issue rather than summerise with a balance of the issues which was stated earlier. Very little of our countryside is truly wild, it's a man made space that all needs to be managed in balance.

I applied to Secret World down here to house badgers on my land but was turned down on the basis that my house is too close to roads . I live in a very rural location and was offering an unused copse of about an acre connected to woodland and hedgerows at least 200m from a road.

[old man]

18 hours ago, Fisheruk said:

The problem with controlling badgers is that the Wildlife trusts use its picture as their logo. Not easy for them to face reality.

When have any of them ever really faced reality? They don't have to?

[Penelope]

On 4/2/2018 at 08:44, JohnfromUK said:

Quite, although that related mainly to climate change.  I was particularly thinking of a programme he did examining the impact of fieldsports on wildlife.  He was not a fieldsports participant, and 'tended' towards the anti side .......... until he began to seriously research the issues.  The conclusion was that though he would not wish to become active in fieldsports, the impact they had on the natural environment was overwhelmingly positive.  In particular on helping wild birds survive hard winters and food shortages, but in many other ways as well.

It was a thoughtful and very balanced programme.

I believe that was on ITV many years ago; a series of programmes, one of which centered around pheasant shooting.

[JohnfromUK]

44 minutes ago, Penelope said:

I believe that was on ITV many years ago; a series of programmes, one of which centered around pheasant shooting.

It was a long time ago ........ and I can't remember either the channel or the series context.  I was not a supporter of David Bellamy, but I do clearly remember being very impressed by his unbiased research, willingness to evaluate based on the evidence and lack of a 'preconceived outcome' despite I think tending towards the 'anti' side before he studied the issues.

I started by thinking he was a rather 'buffoon like' presenter full of his own bluster and idiosyncratic performance, and finished by respecting a genuine, deep thinking and open minded scientist