"What we actually need is a census and a cull..."

I have to say it's really quite odd how so many people's answer to certain problems is the mass slaughter of the indigenous wildlife of these Islands. I guess this has less to do with an understanding of the ecology of our countryside and more to do with posh people who enjoy killing things not being allowed to hunt. But . . . before you all jump down my throat, here are the estimated number of fox deaths and how they died in 1997 when hunting was still allowed (
source):


100,000 killed on roads
80,000 shot
50,000 killed by terrier packs
30,000 snared
15,000 killed by hunts
10,000 killed by lurchers
Total: 285,000 fox deaths per annum

But this figure is only relevant in the context of the number of foxes alive in the UK at any one time; this number is give in the same report as being half a million.

"The numbers of foxes increasing means that their eating down from the top will reduce drastically the number of birds and animals that keep insect numbers down."

I would suggest the top predator in this country is the domestic cat, which is responsible for the demise of far more small animals than foxes could ever be. This is because there are approximately 9 million domestic cats at present in the UK, and according to a sobering paper from The Mammal Society these cats are responsible for a staggering slaughter of our native wildlife. The paper states: "The total number of animals brought home by about 9 million cats living in Great Britain during the five month period April-August 1997 was estimated to be in the order of 92.4 million (95% CI 85.1-100.2). This estimate can be broken down to 57.4 (52.1-63.1) million mammals, 27.1 (25.1-29.2) million birds, 4.8 (4.1-5.6) million reptiles and amphibians and 2.8 (2.3-3.4) million other items. "

This is not some lefty literature, it's a scientific study whose methodology and rationale are laid bare in the paper. The scientific principle of parsimony suggests that the idea that foxes are not responsible for the mass destruction of the native fauna, but cats are and that is precisely the conclusion the paper comes to.

A census and a cull anyone?