UK full of really wild animals! Stats...
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kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
niksativa said:
TBH I have no idea - a quick way would be to look at the amount of land forests cover in England (not British since British includes Scotland
) and compare that to the total land area since before humans came to the UK the whole country was covered in forest...
Kameron
Kamoceratops
Beastwatch are a load of nutters who report every German Sheppard they see off the leash as a Lynx, every fat Labrador as a Wild Boar and logs floating in the river are all Crocs. Fucking townies who go for a walk on the Ridgeway, see a cow and think that is biodiversity. Oh yes and a dead Piranha in the Thames, hardly a resurgent in tropical species in the dirty river more like another piece of garbage chucked out by someone.niksativa said:
Cid
Proper break this time
Kameron said:
Nevertheless wild boar are experiencing a resurgence in the UK... defra report. iirc some of them escaped from farms and research institutes that closed down. There may have been cross breeding though (for increased litters), so it's hard to say for definite whether we have a pure breed wild boar population. It would be great to see them back in the wild in the UK, they're a beautiful and normally very shy animal.
ska invita
back on the other side
Your right (especially about the bRitian Scotland thing...)!kyser_soze said:TBH I have no idea - a quick way would be to look at the amount of land forests cover in England (not British since British includes Scotland
Basically almost the whole of Britain was forest at one point, save for natural clearings etc., (which are features of forests),certain rocky outpsots,certain shorelines (where salt spray and other conditions halt growth) , and wetlands.
I remember reading a touching lament by a 16thcentury British monk bemoaning the destruction of the British landscape, with her fences and stripped bare fields. He's lucky he didnt live another 500 years...
kameron said:
good stuff, and spot on.
likewise townies who see a few trees and think Britain hasnt destroyed its animal habitats with fields, grazing, urban sprawl, islandisation and road building - who go to the countryside and see a fucking field with some shitting sheep and cows and a fence around it and think its natural and wild.
Still, lets hope the wolves and boar sightings having some truth behind them.
*Can anyone remember any details about the huge Netherlands wildland project where animals are free to roam, with special pathways across motorways and land leading right up to cities? It came up one a couple of years back - cant remember it now...ta. It was a great model.
anotherTzone
New Member
kerplunk said:
I can vouch for that as well. Me, my dad and my brother all saw a big cat in Northants years ago. Was running across a field. Definitely big cats out there.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
Azrael23 said:Imagine seeing this on a golf course!
Looks like a normal cat to me
Guineveretoo
Mostly bewildered
When the BBC first put up this story, they had a photo of a panda attached to the article. I emailed them and pointed out that they were making fools of themselves, since it was RED pandas which had been spotted, and which are pretty common in wild life parks in UK, so no surprise that one or two escape.
The BBC changed the picture quite quickly, and also changed it to read "red panda" in the list. Silly buggers should read press releases more closely.
The BBC changed the picture quite quickly, and also changed it to read "red panda" in the list. Silly buggers should read press releases more closely.
Guineveretoo
Mostly bewildered
Azrael23 said:Imagine seeing this on a golf course!
It's a fox, isn't it? With a domestic cat or a rabbit (not clear enough to see)
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
No! It's clearly a ginger tom and a grey rabbit.Guineveretoo said:
It's nose is way too short and it's too cat-like to be a fox
Cid
Proper break this time
niksativa said:
The wild boar populations are well documented and quite extensively photographed... Of course wild boar can be something of a pest, so sadly the populations could easily be whiped out again. Dunno about wolves, seems less likely as they could only really come from wildlife parks etc, which tend to be secure and probably wouldn't have enough escapees to establish a breeding population.
Fez909
toilet expert
I was having a conversation with my girlfriend after seeing March of the Penguins.
I reckoned that they would be able to flourish in the Lake District or somewhere similar in the UK - maybe the Scottish Lochs. There'd be no obvious predator that I can think of, and the weather is much milder, without being too hot.
So...How about we introduce penguins to the UK? How cool would that be!
(I know, I know..There'd be some unforeseen consequence which would kill all the Salmon or something...
)
I reckoned that they would be able to flourish in the Lake District or somewhere similar in the UK - maybe the Scottish Lochs. There'd be no obvious predator that I can think of, and the weather is much milder, without being too hot.
So...How about we introduce penguins to the UK? How cool would that be!
(I know, I know..There'd be some unforeseen consequence which would kill all the Salmon or something...
)
ska invita
back on the other side
Wolves and boar live quite happily in Poland (along with Bison and perhaps a couple of bears) without annying the locals - however we have such a fragmented eco system with only pockets of forest and wild land that it would be more likely that they would annoy people.#Cid said:
Even though the deer population is booming I dont think people think of them as a pest, do they? (I do a bit... too many grazing animals kill all the wild flowers and stop trees from growing)
niksativa said:
there are people trying to reintroduce wolves in Scotland.
Wasn't there a thing in the papers a few months ago about a penguin on the shores of the Thames in London, was asssumed to have jumped ship Madegasgar-stylee! I know that there are some wallabees up my way way in the Stokenchurch gap around the M40, I saw some of the buggeres, supposedly escaped froma private zoo a few years ago and are quite capable of surviving our winters
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
niksativa said:
Utter balls! Scotland may only have @1% of the old Caledonian forest left but that estimate never included other forms of equally traditional broadleaf woodland in other parts of the country. Also, the term forest is often erroniously applied to great tracts of land where historically traditional hunting rights applied but were never actually fully forested. Then of course there is the change in climate in the last few thousand years that lowered the treeline & naturally deforested a fair chunk of upland areas without any human intervention whatsoever
Peak deforestation was reached in the immediate post WW1 years & stopped at about 5% & has climbed steadily upwards since. To the point that by the 1970s, certain parts of the country were suffering badly from over-forestation & this has only begun to be corrected in the last decade or so. Other parts, including places that were never tradtionally forested are beginning to suffer the same fate thanks to misapplied tax breaks etc.
All-in, plenty of trees!
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
Paul Russell said:
I get to do image/morpological analysis on "sighting" photos regularly - Of all the hundreds of big cat images that landed on my desk over the years, there have only been a handful that don't turn out to be a domestic moggie, wildcat/Kellas cat & warrant further investigation.
Of the rest of that list, much of it is quite pointless & utterly non-newsworthy:
Several species of larger shark (& umpteen small ones) are native to UK waters or regular visitors (we have tagged & tracked certain species).
Boar colonies have been established for years (we monitor one)
Wallabies (along with Coypu, Racoons & some other species) were popular novelty introductions to many Victorian estates & have been well established since those times.
Snakes. As well as our native species, escapees/releases of exotic species are far from unknown but most will never survive the winters or even autumn tempratures. Also, Sloworms are frequently mistaken for snakes.
Spiders. They can't be looking that hard. We turn-up more than that every year alone. 130-odd Black Widows is the most I've seen in one place recently.
Eagles - Native species again, & I've seen more than 4 each of two species this year - Indeed I see them up close nearly every time I go fishing. They catch more than me too!
Wolves, we'd know about it if it were true as most of the claimed sightings fall in one or other of our study areas & we are trying to get them reintroduced legally. The only thing I can think of were those guys who were caught trying to illegally introduce them a few years back - in the wrong habitat altogether. Idiots!
No idea about Pandas, Scorpions or Penguins, except that I do recall something about a self-supporting colony of Scotpions in Kent. Plenty are kept as pets tho so releases are not unsurprising.
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
niksativa said:
They are becoming a very serious pest indeed & their damage is a lot more than just grazing - They can destroy/seriously damage large numbers of fully grown trees & contribute badly to erosion in areas with thin soil cover.
Incompetent landowners/managers after big-money shooting have caused herds to gow to unsustainable levels & the cock-eyed actions of the Red Deer Comission have alienated most of the people on the ground who can actually do something about the problem. Hence our Wolf-plan.
pogofish Also said:
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