Don’t upset the natural balance

I WONDER if Derbyshire Dales District Council and in particular councillor Claire Raw know anything about the countryside that they live in.

I would not try to tell a car factory owner how to run his business or a shop owner how to run his shop or even try to tell a forester how to grow trees, so why do people think that they can tell those who have lived and worked on the land for generations how to manage their land.

It is because of such people that the demise of the badger has been brought about. For hundreds of years badgers, having no other predators except humans, have been managed by country people with just a few culled as and when necessary – as are the elephants in Africa, which are protected from poachers but occasionally have to be culled in certain areas when the herds grow too big and are destroying their environment.

From our own experience, badger numbers started to grow from about late 1980s. Winters became warmer, more food became available which raised their nutritional status during bad weather and the general public started to take more of an interest in wildlife with some people even feeding them!

Consequently litter sizes grew and survived. Our own badger sett, after being the same size for generations, started to increase and badgers could be seen frequently at night instead of now and again, sometimes even fighting or breaking into hen coops to kill hens and take eggs.

I know this is not just my experience as I belong to a hen club and this topic was brought up more often.

You can always tell the difference between a fox raid and a badgers.

One lady even went out to try to rescue her hens in the night and was told by older members that was a very dangerous thing to do as they have such long sharp claws. We have always had very large numbers of lapwings and golden plovers as well as skylarks, curlews and hedgehogs which could be seen every night.

I have many lovely pictures of them all, BUT as the badgers increased all these grew less and less until now we only had one pair of curlews and I don’t think their young survived.

Also from about 1990 we have had a steady rise in rapters starting with buzzards (it is lovely to see them rising on the thermals but they also like to stalk the meadows finding eggs and young birds to eat) and then ravens, crows, magpies, jackdaws and now beautiful kites.

With all of these as well as badgers hoovering up at night, the poor ground nesting birds and hedgehogs don’t stand a chance.

In these modern times with all the publicity that is given to the countryside, well-meaning people have campaigned against the culling of badgers that has been going on for centuries without them becoming extinct and the same goes for rapters.

It is wonderful to see and hear them about but what happens when the balance of nature changes and there are too many of them about to the detriment of the other species that we love?

What do we do when we have rats in our streets or homes?

Some may like to have a rat as a pet but many of them is deemed not so good and the rat catcher is called in.

The same goes with an invasion of flying ants or grey squirrels eating the young trees just turning into the town’s newly planted wood.

Wildlife is a balancing act and we have to be very careful when we intervene.

The huge increase in badgers and crows would have been quietly and expertly kept down to a healthy number if countryside people had been left to do the jobs that they normally do without upsetting the rural economy.

(Name and address supplied)