Have rare wild animals been conserved, protected, cosseted, sanctified, almost to the point where they are rare no longer and are even endangering others. This is a question raised about Britain in an article in the London Times by one of their country writers Paul Heiney. There are mutterings, he writes, that something will have to be done. In last Saturday's paper he quotes from a letter by Mrs Buddy Trahair from near Salisbury who included "a lurid set of photographs of decapitated hens, mutilated cockerels and general carnage". It was a badger that did it, writes Heiney. You wonder if it was seen at the killing or left undisputed paw marks. For, more usually, this kind of slaughter is carried out by a fox or, perhaps, a mink.
But Mrs Trahair tells Heiney that the badgers in her area do not stop at hens. Fields, hedges and gardens have been dug up, with dire effects on trees, plants and road safety. Hard to credit. But there is more. One badger raided the churchyard and dislodged human remains, which the widow had to re-bury. But then the badger returned and dug them up again. Presumably this badger, alone or with help, was trying to establish a new sett, rather than going after human remains.
The people in a farm in the same area had so many setts that they marked them on the map with red spots. The Ministry did admit it looked like an outbreak of measles. But there was nothing it could do. (Surely this cannot be so. Does the British Wildlife Act or series of Acts not allow culling or remedial measures by designated officials in certain cases. Such as, for example, the shooting of cormorants fishing off the mouth of a salmon river at the time when smolts are going out to sea?) This badger outbreak, remember, is from one area only. And, incidentally, thinking of our own country and the charges against badgers on the TB question, it is perhaps on the cards that someone will try to pass off BSE as being spread by the same. No, we're not as daft as that.
From badgers to otters. Heiney's article tells us that crofters on North Uist are reported to be calling for the culling of otters because - wait for this one - flocks of poultry were wiped out, "endangering already meagre earnings". Could it be mink again?
His worry is that "as we have been sold conservation as a fashion accessory without which no late 21st-century life is complete, badgers and the rest of them will wake up to find that they have joined the hula-hoop, the slow-cooker and the prawn cocktail on a heap of discarded fads. They are too important for that. But so are young hens about to come into lay."