I’ve been listening to and reading items about lost or almost lost species being returned to European countries. Beavers are being reintroduced to farm lands here in the UK as a way of solving some of our waterway problems. Bison were introduced ( or re-introduced? Did we originally have bison here?) to a place in Kent, with a view to establishing a proper herd. I’ve written before about the benefits specialists feel such herds will bring to the countryside. Bears - brown bears rather than grizzlies - are a protected species in countries like Spain and Romania. But what struck me most was wolves. Here’s something I read:
“The grey wolf has been the fastest to return among carnivores. For centuries they were killed by humans, until a low-point during the 1970s when there were only a few populations hanging on in pockets of south and north-eastern Europe. Since the introduction of legislation to protect them, and more public tolerance of living alongside them, numbers have increased by 1,800%. There are 17,000 individuals roaming almost all of continental Europe, with calls to reintroduce them to Britain too.”
It’s that last sentence that worries me. Do we really want wolves roaming around our island? I remember my daughter being traumatised by a book she read as a child, “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase” by Joan Aitken. Nowadays my daughter has a dog, saying she hopes to prevent her own children from being afraid of dogs, as she claims she was. How would she cope with the idea of wolves running around?
No! Beautiful animals they may well be but I don’t think we need them here!
Maybe they need them in New Zealand though. “Marauding feral pigs have blighted a central suburb in New Zealand’s capital, killing kid goats at an urban farm, intimidating dogs and turning up in residents’ gardens.
The owners of a goat milk farm in the hills of the suburb of Brooklyn, 10 minutes from the centre of Wellington, has lost about 60 kid goats to pigs in the past few months. Often, all that is left of them are gnawed bone fragments and parts of the hooves or head.
“It’s a murder scene,” said Naomi Steenkamp, the farm’s co-owner. “If they find something they like eating, and it is a free feed – like a newborn kid – they are going to keep coming back.””
At the other end of the scale are slugs! This year has had one of the hottest, driest summers on record, with most of England still officially in drought, despite recent showers. Also despite the fact that when the little fellow and I went out into the garden this morning we lasted maybe 15 minutes before it started to rain. But my rain barrel is still only half full so perhaps there is still a problem. I need to take another walk around Dovestone to check out the reservoir. Getting back to slugs: one consequence of the drought is that slug numbers are down, apparently.
“I went to survey a woodland site last week and it took me over 30 minutes to locate a slug. Usually, I would expect to find them under almost every log in that habitat,” said Jake Stone, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge. “I thought that there would be fewer around, but I’ve never seen this low a number. But I suppose that’s to be expected, because it’s rarely been this hot and dry.”
As a matter of fact since we’ve been back to having occasional rainshowers I’m seeing slugs on the bridle paths around here. And the snails are still attacking my flowering plants. Grrrr! I suspect more southerly parts of the country - the bit they mean when they talk about England in the news - are still a lot drier than here.
In the places where slugs are still around, we are reminded to be tolerant of them - if you put down slug pellets, the poison int pellets kills of hedgehogs and other such creatures that like to eat slugs. It seems that only nine of the 44 recognised species in the UK actually eat garden plants. Who knew? And how do you tell them, apart? “The majority are very beneficial in the garden because they break down dead plant matter and turn it back into compost,” said Paul Hetherington of Buglife, an organisation devoted to the conservation of invertebrates. “There’s also the knock-on effect on things that eat slugs and snails: song thrushes, amphibians, hedgehogs – all of these creatures are in decline at the moment.”
There you go.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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