Just reintroduce wolves, problem solved.
BRITAIN MUST DECLARE WAR on Cervinaean menace
Brits need to take up arms and shoot* half of Blighty's deer population in a war to save the countryside from destruction. There are more Bambi-like creatures in need of shooting than ever before in the UK, we're told, and their numbers have reached heights not scaled since the last Ice Age. With no natural predators, the deer …
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:47 GMT Rampant Spaniel
Re: And can I pop in a vote
Boar are fine, just takes two people and a sharp knife to catch them. You can also use dogs to hunt them even more safely although I know that is unpopular with the Notting Hill crowd. I haven't heard of or seen boars going for people, at least not unless you get near their babies or you corner them.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 14:29 GMT Stoneshop
Re: And can I pop in a vote
You can also use dogs to hunt them even more safely
Chatting with the police while waiting for a tow truck after a collision with a deer incapacitated our car, they told of one of their dogs that had to be reassembled after a wild boar made clear it didn't like dogs. This was a police dog, though, not a hunting dog, and its behaviour towards boar may not have been as cautious as a suitably-trained hunting dog would.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 15:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: And can I pop in a vote
Boar are fine, just takes two people and a sharp knife to catch them. You can also use dogs to hunt them even more safely
Boars would be wild mamals so using dogs to hunt them would be illegal ... might be able to use a couple to "flush out" a boar so you can shoot it.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 14:41 GMT Charles 9
Re: And can I pop in a vote
I believe the boar detractors are referring to the risk of Trichinosis. Wild boar are known for carrying the Trichinella parasites, which are usually passed on by eating raw/undercooked meat. IIRC deer (herbivores) aren't the type to acquire Trichinella while bears and pigs (omnivores) can and do.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:43 GMT Rampant Spaniel
Re: And can I pop in a vote
Interesting, we don't have that problem, just too many deer, goats and hogs. There are hunting seasons but they don't apply in all circumstances and if you are decent with a bow you can keep a well stocked freezer.
I'm pretty sure we cannot sell any of it and all hell would rain on us if we tried so that's probably why we don't have the illegal feeding. That and nature feeds them well enough.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:39 GMT Rampant Spaniel
Re: And can I pop in a vote
We have wild boar, goat and deer (axis) aplenty here. I do my very best to control their population! If you folks need any help I would be happy to assist.
Assuming the science behind the need for a cull is valid and done case by case in each environment, then this seems like a remarkable sensible idea. So sensible in fact that I distrust it on principal!
I would really love to see some studies done on the quality of the meat, I would put a pint on it being cleaner ('bad' ecoli count etc) than your average supermarket joint, but it would be good to see if that is the case.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 14:24 GMT cortland
Too much for modern humans; make that pen-knives* instead of sabres and that'll do.
* I remember having to bring one to school to sharpen pencils; steel nibs had killed the quill industry.
"Here, children, we have the dreaded pen-knife-toothed tiger, the only mammal with folding fangs. Some scientists ascribe the muntjac plague to its poor dentition..."
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:34 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Hunger Games!
Armed bears? Well...
Why not give the task to university robotics research groups?
Robots in camo, equipped with spears, crossbows and kives slithering through forests doing pattern matching on Bambi Creatures To Terminate.
It's fun! One can probably obtain a few grants from the ministry of clusterfucks and ordinance, too.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:41 GMT I ain't Spartacus
And nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan...
Quick El Reg, can you not hear those dogs barking? This commentard is clearly a Terminator sent from the future to infiltrate us, and persuade us to train a robot army, which will be used to destroy us! He must be exposed using your site logs. Does El Reg have access to an industrial press?
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Thursday 7th March 2013 14:27 GMT Ken Hagan
@Ru
I suspect the green solution to your little poser is simply to increase the amount of habitat available to the deer. After all, we've spent most of the last 10000 years deforesting and generally nicking land from the rest of the ecosystem, so it is not surprising to find that "wildlife" is short of space. Of course, allowing wildlife to increase its resource consumption isn't a sustainable policy, but having got all the people out of the way you can *then* release the bears and wolves.
Nature got along fine for a few billion years before we showed up. It's not actually an unworkable solution, but I suspect most of the human population will reckon that a cull is a better one.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 16:47 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
@human impact
>totally erasing the human imprint on the landscape or just that particular bit?
It's mostly a problem in the home counties and new forest ?
I don't see any problem in eradicating the human population south of say Nottingham.
Unleash the rapid laser beam equipped wippets of the north
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:43 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: It's lean, rich and lower in fat than the main meat groups.
I like this approach to problem solving. Have we not got too many horses as well? Because I propose a similar solution.
If only all environmental problems had such tasty solutions!
I propose a solution to atmospheric C02. Giant Sodastreams. Greens should get busy with the fizzy.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 17:47 GMT Marshalltown
Most domesticated food animals ...
would probably be fine if they weren't fed terminal diets intended to fatten them. Not sure about Britain, but in the US cattle are fed corn when they reach the feed lot, which they are NOT evolved to eat. It causes all kinds of problems in the rumen. The diet boosts their cholesterol loads and is also the reason that they are regularly given antibiotics. Grass-fed cattle are considerably healthier.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 12:44 GMT Captain Hogwash
"Researchers reckoned...
...that 53 per cent of muntjac and 60 per cent of roe deer need to be wiped out instead of the previous recommendations of 30 and 20 per cent, respectively."
But earlier...
"...muntjac***, a "non-native invasive species"..."
Surely the correct figures then should be 100% of muntjac and possibly some other number of roe.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 12:56 GMT Mad Mike
Re: "Researchers reckoned...
Whether something is non-native or not is irrelevant. Almost every species in the UK are non-native if you go back far enough in time. Human beings are non-native, as we came from Africa. Should we therefore be wiped out? Species moving between land masses is a normal part of evolution whether carried by man or any other host species, or even their own legs!!
Instead of wiping anything out, let's simply breed them like cows and enjoy a very tasty alternative to beef, that is even better for you. Venison is so expensive at the moment and hopefully, this cull will result in prices falling dramatically.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:17 GMT Kubla Cant
Re: "Researchers reckoned...
"Whether something is non-native or not is irrelevant. Almost every species in the UK are non-native if you go back far enough in time."
What's relevant is how recently it arrived. If it's been here a long time, there are likely to be natural predators. Unfortunately, the deer's natural predators were big enough to eat homo sapiens, too, or at least to compete with us. So it's goodbye natural predator.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 14:09 GMT rh587
Re: "Researchers reckoned...
The general consensus is anything that was cut off on Blighty when sea levels rose after the last ice age and the Channel flooded is considered native - at the time there was little to no "native" ecosystem as most of the country was covered in half a mile of ice, obliterating previous habitats. That was 10k years ago.
By contrast, american deer species were introduced just 100-200 years ago, at the same time as the other top predator species were being wiped out within these fair shores. So yes, they are non-native.
Species very rarely just move between continents of their own accord (well, Europe/Asia yes because it's land. To America, not so much). Typically if an animal can get from one landmass to another, so can their predators. Part of the ecosystem moves with them. There are exceptions, but not many.
For instance, during the ice age, a lot of areas that are now sea became land. Man walked up from Africa, along with deer, other animals - and wolves.
Subsequently some of them were cut off when the channel flooded - a cross section of a functional ecosystem.
Conversely when we brought deer from America, we did not bring any wild cats or wolves along for the ride.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 20:06 GMT Eddy Ito
Re: "Researchers reckoned...
"Conversely when we brought deer from America, we did not bring any wild cats or wolves along for the ride."
Actually only Caribou/Reindeer, if they count, are native to the Americas. The four imported species of deer in Britain seem to come from Persia or the Orient with the Fallow deer from the former and the Sika, Muntjac and the ominous Chinese Water Deer. Why ominous? Simple, "death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth..."
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Friday 8th March 2013 07:47 GMT Mad Mike
Re: "Researchers reckoned...
It's really interesting how we remove ourselves by nature and somehow consider ourselves differently. We are part of nature and unless you're a creationist, were created by nature.
Therefore, us bringing a particular variety of deer into this country is no different to a flea catching a ride on the back of a rat. We're part of nature, not separate. It's only our built-in sense of superiority that makes us think we're different.
By the logic expessed here, which somehow thinks time has got something to do with this, in 10,000 years time, these deer will be native and therefore are OK. And saying deer have no predators is simply untrue. We're the predator now!! It doesn't have to be non-human.
Nature is a wonderful thing and takes all this in her stride. It's man's arrogance that makes him think he needs to deal with all this, or that somehow nature has to stand still and everything should remain as it has been for the last few hundred years. If the deers population gets too big, natural processes (such as available food etc.) will control it. If this changes the natural landscape of this country, that's evolution for you!!
Human beings have this strange notion that things shouldn't change over time, hence their general desire to try and 'manage' things to keep them 'as they've always been'. However, this is quite unnatural.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:21 GMT Kubla Cant
Re: Control emissions?
Burning fossil fuel releases carbon that was previously locked up in the ground. Burning wood that's cultivated for fuel sets up a cycle where the carbon released by burning is recaptured by photosynthesis in the growing trees. Ideally, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere would be constant.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:37 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Control emissions?
Unfortunately burning your forest happens faster than its regeneration. Add subsidies for creating wood chips and/or "guaranteed prices" and the forest is gone in a forthnight. Did I mention that you don't actually cover a lot of energy needs with this kinda stupidity? In the old times, whole forests were transformed into ocean-going ships at least.
Well, sounds like a good idea from the ministry of silly walks.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 18:12 GMT Kubla Cant
Re: Control emissions?
@Don Jefe: My impression is that the oak used for hulls was mostly English, while the Baltic was the source for hemp and pine. Some ships were built from pine, but they weren't popular.
I don't suppose forest oak has been much used for firewood in historical times. It's too expensive, and probably too much trouble to cut. Most wood for domestic purposes was cultivated by coppicing. The object of the forest-burning was to open up land for farming.
@Destroy All Monsters: I don't think the idea is to use slow-growing forest trees as fuel. The idea that photosynthesis would be a good way to store solar energy by reducing carbon dioxide is plausible, but I have no idea how the actual economics work out. It's disappointing that there seems to be so little comparative end-to-end analysis of alternative solutions. Instead, as you say, we get a labyrinth of subsidies (wood chip, biodiesel), producer interest (wind farms) and hippie preconception.
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Friday 8th March 2013 07:50 GMT Mad Mike
Re: Control emissions?
"The vast majority of ship timbers and ships stores came from Scandanavia, Russia, and the U.S."
Absolutely not. Look at the New Forest for starters. That was almost totally due to Portsmouth and ship building. That's why oak is nowhere near as common in the UK than it once was. It was largely harvested for building ships.
Obviously, some was burnt for fuel, but this would have been the softer woods, less suitable for building ships.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 17:54 GMT Marshalltown
Re: Control emissions?
The putative reasoning would be that since wood is a "renewable" resource that captures CO2 from the atmopshere, burning that wood is "neutral." Burning fossil fuels, or generating CO2 from limestone for carbonated drinks makes additional carbon available and thus ain't "neutral." If they insisted on carbonation being generated from natural fermentation Coke and Pepsi would be carbon neutral too.
Beer, because it really is carbon neutral
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Thursday 7th March 2013 14:25 GMT M Gale
Re: Contraceptive dart guns?
Depends on your priorities.
Kill Bambi now, and watch the population bounce right back in a few years.
Or stop Bambi reproducing for life, watch the population naturally dwindle and take quite a while longer to recover.
As a fairly committed rabbit-food-eater, I'll at least mention population control methods that don't involve blowing big holes in things. In the absence of a cervine-targetted Combine suppression field, darts are probably the best option there.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 15:07 GMT Silverburn
Re: Contraceptive dart guns?
Darts? How will matches of 501 help reduce their numbers exactly?
sarcasm: on
And no shooting? So...poison, snaring, castration, habitat burning, disease introduction, germ warfare and introduction of brutal predators are probably still all ok, right...?
<-- The only way to guarantee rapid numbers reduction is this. There are a few unpleasant side affects mind.
sarcasm:off
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Thursday 7th March 2013 21:07 GMT JimC
Re: bounce back
[sigh]
A cull isn't a one off process: its an annual task. The idea of a cull is to mimic the effect of an apex predator on the population, so its a continuous process. The only one off that works is to kill all of them (incidentally the right thing to do with muntjac and water deer).You may not like the thought of blowing holes in things, but I don't much like the idea of them starving to death over the winter, which is what happens if you don't get the population down to a sustainable level in the autumn cull.
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Friday 8th March 2013 07:55 GMT Mad Mike
Re: bounce back
"The idea of a cull is to mimic the effect of an apex predator on the population"
Nope. It is actually an apex predator in action. We are that apex predator. Just because we're doing it, doesn't mean it isn't part of nature. We are a product of nature!! It is entirely justified and perfectly reasonable for us to 'harvest' the plentiful food around us. If it happens to have side benefits, that's great. It's the natural order of things. If a predators natural food is no longer around, does it just die, or simply move onto something else? Those that can't move on die themselves; those that can pick another food source.
So, us culling and eating deer is a perfect example of nature in action!!
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:40 GMT Robert Carnegie
I notice,
they carefully don't put "These animals carry disease" and "Eat them, they're tasty" next to one another. That is left to me. You're welcome.
This is also why I don't want horse-burger when it was supposed to be cow. You don't know if it's good horse or bad horse or cat-food horse. You only know whether or not it's good cow, and it's not.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:59 GMT rh587
Re: I notice,
That's for the abbatoir vets and meat examiners to check.
It's not rocket science - they have to check farm animals as well and reject those with parasites or other defects. When you see rabbit or wood pigeon on the menu in one of the better gastro-pubs with a chef who knows their game meat, that came from a local hunter, via a licensed game dealer (a different qualification from being a regular butcher) who is trained to spot unfit meat.
Even "farmed" deer live their life out in the countryside, susceptible to ticks and disease.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:43 GMT Number6
Earning their keep
I've yet to work out how they manage it, given the fences and brambles, but I occasionally get muntjac in the garden. So far they've confined themselves to eating things that I'd otherwise have to cut back so they're being helpful. One day I'll accidentally let the dog out before noticing one (they're a lot smaller than our dog) and it might get interesting. At least I'd find out their entry point.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:51 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Earning their keep
My Mum's dog has always fancied his chances with the local muntjac. Unfortunately, being a Labrador of very little brain, his stalking approach is to charge full speed towards them through the noisiest cover available, so he's never even got close to one before it's buggered off. I strongly suspect he'd be in for a shock if he ever caught one, bit like what'd happen to his nose if he ever accidentally caught the cats he chases out of her garden.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 14:39 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: Earning their keep
"I strongly suspect he'd be in for a shock if he ever caught one"
That's generally true. I've seen cats catch fairly large birds, only to regret it a few seconds later. I've heard that a cornered rat is equally unco-operative. I imagine that scaling the whole process up to the size of a deer is quite interesting.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 21:44 GMT Yet Another Commentard
Re: Earning their keep
Our dog cornered and killed a rat in the stables last November. I was surprised, he's a King Charles Cavalier, a breed not exactly known for their ferocious attacks. Perhaps the rat thought the same. He still managed to get bitten on the lip, which required another expensive visit to the vet.
True story.
As a complete aside, can we also declare war on moles. There's not much meat on them I know, but I think given enough you could make some clothes out of the skins. I've taken a staggering 21 out of our lawn so far this year, and they keep on coming. It's an invasion. It looks like the battle of the Somme out there.
Sorry, I'll calm down now.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 13:57 GMT John Sager
Re: Earning their keep
One of our neighbours' dogs was savaged quite badly by a muntjac some years ago. They have become much more numerous in our part of the world (SE Suffolk) over the last couple of decades. I often see one crossing our garden at night on the CCTV.
No-one has suggested Lynx as a candidate for re-introduction, though I think they are more at home in hilly or mountainous areas, so Suffolk isn't exactly prime territory for them.
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Thursday 7th March 2013 19:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'd like to suggest.....
In the interests of saving animals we all agree need to be saved and getting rid of those that need to be culled, I vote that Britain introduce bengal tigers, polar bears and komodo dragons into the environment. That should show those pesky deer who's boss!!
(And if the tigers, bears and dragons don't work, maybe you can clone some velociraptors?)
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Friday 8th March 2013 01:07 GMT C. P. Cosgrove
Venison ?
Delicious !
Especially the liver.
Slice into smallish pieces, coat with flour, fry, serve with fried onions, mashed tatties and any other vegetable of your choice - superb.
And there I was thinking this was an IT journal, not Good Housekeeping. Doesn't change the fact that venison is delicious.
Chris Cosgrove
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Friday 8th March 2013 04:47 GMT Jtom
Do some good
Just a suggestion if it hasn't already been made:
The state of Texas also had a problem with a deer population that got out of hand. The state gave out the normal hunting permits - you could hunt enough deer to feed your family for the year - then they issued special permits to hunt more, but with one requirement: the deer meat had to be handed over to the state. It was then used to supplement the free food available for those who lived below the poverty level. Everyone was happy, and the save-the-deer nuts were hard pressed to say the poor shouldn't have meat.
Then too, handled correctly you could likely spare the lives of a lot of horses......
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Friday 8th March 2013 09:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Love the deer
I'm an Australian hunter of deer, our introduced species are considerably larger and more agressive breaders than the smaller deer we are talking about here. I find deer meat to be extremely tasty, low in fat and downright good fun to hunt.
(Sambar) deer are superbly capable at evading predation from much more proficient hunters than me in their native habitat which puts me at ease as to the sporting side of things, 5 years and I've shot very few. I object to the image of deer hunters as being rednecks and toothless morons. I eat meat, yes. But I take a hands on role in selecting it, preparing it and taking it from the environment. In my mind the whole approach of taking a wild animal unaware with a bullet while it stands in the trees is significantly better for overall animal welfare (obviously not long term for the one thats about to be eaten) than a feedlot and a cramped truck covered in dung and piss, frightened, tired and uncomfortable animals being slaughtered and packed in plastic to be sent to the supermarket for people to eat without connecting it to its origin
I'd deerly (see what I did there) like to see the wild game feast regain some of its former prestige -- I like the idea of a wild meat home grown veg meal, served with some homebrew beer -- if you are a person who is against hunting, I'd urge you to seek out a responsible hunter and talk it over with them, and perhaps have a go at it as an observer. I think you'll be very very surprised how seriously we take the welfare of our quary and just how important our prey is to us.
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Monday 11th March 2013 14:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
An environmental report from the largely discredited University of East Anglia? No doubt they will cite deer as real cause of 'Man made' Global Warming, renamed as 'Global Warming' and renamed again as 'Climate Change' known to you and I as the weather. Still it has to be worth a research grant ;-)