Alarum! Don't Panic! Life on Earth Threatened by Bambi!

Cervidaeophobia?! ... (I may have invented a word)

Nothing says more about the sad state of the debate about our countryside than the current news mania about deer. Dumbing down comes no dumber.

A combination of academics anxious to get their names into the news, conservation industry public relations officers and 24 hour news purveyors needing a story try desperately to create an alarmist avalanche in the minds of a confused public. In this they feed into the control and command mentality of the farming industry. The consequence is that millions of people who’ve never or hardly ever seen deer become convinced there’s some kind of super-plague of wild creatures about to destroy all that’s best about our country and create pile-ups on the roads.

To get closer to the truth consider:

1 Deer are among the few mammals that have survived the relentless wildlife persecution of many centuries by man who has himself recklessly killed off all their natural predators apart from man himself (and he's had a pretty good try at that). Those persecutions have been fed by just such alarmist distortions as the present one.

2 The deer that are the subject of this paper are around Thetford Forest in Norfolk where the ‘problem’ species are such as the introduced muntjac.

3 When people ask me to show them the deer in the hills and woods around Sheffield it’s hard to find them and they are often disappointed. We do however see many people often in cars or on mountain bikes sometimes behaving irresponsibly but never any suggestion they should be culled.

4 There are far too many farm livestock in these parts who do far more damage than the deer to habitats having been selectively bred to have compulsive and insatiable appetites. See many posts on this blog.

5 Not so long ago I sent in a Freedom of Information request to local constabularies asking for the numbers of incidents and reports concerning deer on the roads (mentioned in today’s news item). Reports of sheep and cattle on the roads were frequent. Only one mention was made of deer. I myself have driven regularly on these roads and never seen deer on the highway but have many times had to brake sharply because of sheep. For that reason and others I've lobbied for speed reductions - with little effect. Have we really got to have a sanitised countryside just so that people can do 100 mph on the motorway?

6 There are those in the land managing and farming industries whose command and control mentality is akin to the health and safety lobby warning children from climbing trees. They will always spread alarms about road accidents, disease, ticks, environmental harm (from farmers!!), and potential damage to people’s rose beds.
7 Dim and uncritical people in the media who care little for accuracy but a lot more for a good story with striking pictures insist on showing scenes with red deer stags in relation to this item relating more to smaller and mostly non native deer. Don't ever trust anything you see or hear about on the media. If it's about wildlife or countryside matters it's almost certainly originated in a press release from an interested party.

Some interesting comments below the article on this in The Guardian.

http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/21792340
http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/21792906
http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/21794723

Yet another issue where so-called experts need to be made accountable for their often dubious claims.

Unfortunately you can't just dismiss this kind of nonsense however silly it is because the kind of discourse it sets up in the minds of some semi rural and urban lowlife leads to incidents of poaching egged on by a feeling in the minds of the perpetrators that they are only doing what needs to be done. That's why these small minded blinkered academics are being irresponsible.

Coming soon on this blog: Ten Things That Should Be Culled. (suggestions welcome).