Killing in the name of conservation never seems to fit together and to me sounds like one massive contradiction.
I love to see all wildlife but I am also acutely aware of the fine line there is between feast or famine.
Overpopulation of any species, including humans, in a concentrated area can mean that devaluation followed by degradation of the worlds food assets can swiftly follow.
I am keeping a close eye on the debate concerning the culling of Grey Squirrels in the United Kingdom in a bid to curb their enormous population.
It is sometimes hard to accept that there is a need for intervention but with the Grey Squirrel, hardly without a predator in the United Kingdom, there is no way of achiving a balance in numbers without a cull.
I used to be a member of a pest control club affiliated to WAGBI (Wild Fowlers of Great Britain and Ireland) which is now known as BASC (British Association for Shooting and Conservation).
Primarily, we would be called out to a farmers field, market garden or sports field when rabbits or pigeons were damaging crops.
We often went out at night with powerful lamps and believe me, it is a different story at night. It would appear, as you drove along the headland of a field that the whole field would get up and run back into the sanctuary of the wood or neighbouring land.
Similarly, with pigeons, flocks that can reach several hundreds of thousands of birds can descend on a crop and decimate it within days. Perversely, light nibbling of a crop in early development can be good for them, just as pinching out of some vegetables before the plant is allowed to crop. However, pigeons eat the plant to its roots and render it useless.
We were also called out by English Woodlands, who were based in Witley, to a massive wood on the edge of Guildford called Chantries Woods.
A page on the Forestry Commission site, with links to other pages and documents:
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/greysquirrel
An interesting and informative pro-grey site:
http://www.grey-squirrel.org.uk/
The England Squirrel Forum on the other hand is in favour of "grey squirrel management and control for red squirrel conservation":
http://www.snh.org.uk/ukredsquirrelgroup/englandForum.asp
For Animal Aid's views on DEFRA's plans, see:
http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/pr_wildlife/ALL/1279//
And for a very different viewpoint, see this from the European Squirrel Initiative:
http://www.europeansquirrelinitiative.org/010206.html
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