I sometimes wonder why it is it's gamekeepers who get prosecuted for killing birds of prey when they are merely doing the bidding of their employers, wealthy landowners and proprietors of game shoots. Maybe tracks are well covered with the help of expensive lawyers. But who pays the gamekeepers' defence costs?
The enemies of genuine wildlife are worth looking at. Especially as the wildlife charities are reluctant to take them on, being wary of the Countryside Alliance and Beefy Botham.
Farming is a very powerful vested interest; just listening to the occasional Farming Today programme, 5.45 am, Radio Four, exposes you to enough NFU spokesmen to spoil the remainder of your day. But it's much the same in France.
Mark's article recounts the tale of sheep farmers in France who demonstrated by taking flocks of sheep into Paris. They want to kill more wolves in the French Pyrenees and similar mountainous regions than they're currently allowed. As Mark points out, in other countries farming and wolves co-exist perfectly well but once the wolves and other predators have been driven out, as in France and even more Britain, there is orchestrated resistance to their return whether naturally or via re-introductions.
As Mark says, Sheep are destined to die in more ways than one
" ..... it’s important first to gauge the impact in France of these wolf depredations. Thus in 2013, compensation was paid for the alleged killing of 6,786 sheep by wolves (6) even though it is often the case that only 20% of killings presented for compensation are definitely characteristic of wolf attacks, the compensation also being paid for a further 60% where the wolf's liability is neither excluded nor proven, the farmers being given the benefit of the doubt (7). Taken at face value, the killing of sheep by wolves thus represents 0.11% of the 6 million sheep slaughtered at abattoirs each year in France out of a total population of 9 million sheep (8). There is however an estimate of 100,000 sheep a year killed by wild or stray dogs in France, plus another 300,000 from other causes, these animals not reaching the abattoirs (8). Thus even then, mortality from wolf predation is only 1.69% of the mortality from causes other than being slaughtered for the human food chain. As FNE says, the impact of this presence of wolves “must be qualified and must not be used to hide the main difficulties of sheep which, lest we forget, persist even without [the presence of] wolves” (8). FNE thus believes the wolf is a convenient scapegoat as a “political tool for certain agricultural unions, elected demagogues and opportunists”
If you were wondering about the fate of
sheep in the UK, 14.5 million out of a total population of about 32.8
million are slaughtered each year (9,10) but it is estimated that 2.5
million sheep die, often from exposure, before they could be slaughtered
for human consumption (11). You might think this is somewhat careless, and
you would be right since an EC Directive on the protection of farm
livestock requires that animals not kept in buildings must be given
protection from adverse weather conditions."
Having observed the performance of local sheep graziers over the years, if I were a sheep I might consider re-introduced wolves to be the least of my worries.
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