Wildlife and Barbed Wire

Only yesterday I repeated my concerns about the red deer and the barbed wire fence.

This handsome young stag has been a regular on Blacka.

Several times recently it has been one of a group seen close to the barbed wire.

This morning my eye was caught by its awkward movement and the photo reveals that it is now lame, with an injury to its left foreleg. It was clearly struggling.

It's hard to find words to express what one feels. I have raised this so many times, once having gone so far as to meet with SRWT's Chief Executive and Chair of Trustees. This fence I emphasise provides no useful wildlife purpose that has been demonstrated to me.

Of course it's possible that the injury was caused by some other means. Of course they are wild animals and their lives take them close to dangers of various kinds. But you just have to conclude that the likeliest culprit is this barbarian intrusion into the natural world; and was this not what we have been predicting?  My position has always been that any organisation claiming to exist for the good of wild animals loses all credibility if it's responsible for installations that endanger them. But indignation gets nowhere because of a fundamental irresponsibility built into the institutional approach that they themselves are powerless to resist.

Three years ago I questioned the piling up of branches below a wall just where deer jump over into the thicket, leading to the crippling of another young stag. Before that others have questioned the fourth and lowest strand of barbed wire just at the point where smaller animals the size of foxes and badgers might collide with it. After that they clearly understood the danger because they replaced the lowest wire with plain (not barbed) wire. But, and this tells all we need to know about these managers, the substitution was done only where the fence ran close to a path where visitors might be likely to see it. Elsewhere across 90 percent of the fence's route all wires remained barbed!! People simply need to ask themselves what this tells us about the culture within the wildlife trust. Only a few weeks ago this fence was repaired after they discovered that an animal-lover had cut the barbed wire where it met a deer track to help the animals. Now the likelihood is that mending the fence has led to the death of another noble animal.

Meanwhile the sheep and cattle they have imported, animals they really care about (they bring in money), have left much of the so-called nature reserve a misery to walk on. If I worked for this organisation I would be ashamed to admit it.