In a week that has seen the weather go from bad to
worse. Day after day of constant rain
and gale force winds gusting between 40 and 60 MPH, and then being greeted with
the news of our Minister for the Environment, Owen Paterson was unable to
attend his surveillance of the Somerset Levels sending instead the big cheese
of all environmental issues, Lord Smith due to him suffering a detached
retina. I wish Owen Paterson a very
successful outcome and a speedy recovery, but I would like to take this
opportunity to point out to the government and Lord Smith that killing badgers
will do absolutely nothing to alleviate the flooding problems of the South
West. But along with it I must add none are so blind as those who won’t see and
I am hoping that the Minister on making a full recovery will reconsider his
policy on rolling out another totally unjust badger cull.
I would think, when we all see the amount of misery this
recent flooding has caused to so many families and businesses that the priority
would be turned to dredging our rivers, investment in coastal defences and a
land draining programme that at least equals the work done in the sixties. Although, a lot of this flooding would have
happened no matter what the environment agency would have done but there is no
doubt with better environmental management the water would not have hung around
for the weeks and weeks that it has, making a lot of peoples’ lives absolutely
intolerable.
Most rivers are only running at best half of their
capacity because anything from 35% to 55% is silt and rubbish that has built up
over the last thirty to forty years because the sad truth of this is, that
since our water boards have been privatised, the maintenance of our rivers has
been pretty much non-existent while water bills have gone up year on year.
Always a conflict of interest. Investors looking for the biggest dividends,
the highest rates of return and the environmentalists looking for the good of
nature, the land and the quality of peoples’ lives within it. For the last ten years the farming community down
around the Somerset Levels have been asking the government to look into the
drainage problems and invest in drainage works and river dredging to try and
protect their livelihoods, but what they got was a rolling out of a badger cull
that will not abate the flooding problem neither will it do anything for the
BTB predicament.
The millions spent on a futile badger cull would have
gone a long way to dredging the River Parrett.
Last Friday I watched as the water crept in to some low lying woodland
and a few hedgehogs that had spent the winter in an ‘on and off’ hibernational
state due to the mildness of the winter, decided to up sticks and move further
up into the woodland. Although, we have
seen the wettest January in 250 years this has surely got to have been one of
the mildest winters on record. When I
see the sun which has been so conspicuous by its absence all winter I notice
the little clouds of midges that have been present all winter.
Although, I have told you that my badgers in their badger
setts are in the peak of condition, so is everything else. The seed, the fat balls and other various
treats that we put out on the bird station has been nowhere near as much needed
this year as in many others. I have seen
a 60% decrease in the amount of seed that I have needed to put out, solely due
to the birds being able to find their food elsewhere. The hedgerow larders have yet to be
exhausted. The reality on the ground is,
wildlife have never had it so good.
The Polecat has pushed the rats on from the badger
sett. Normality within the woodland is
once again the order of the day. Like
the hedgehogs, like the rats and our illusive friend, the Polecat, once the
sight of survival and wellbeing has been lost it can be so often replaced with
uncertainty, doubt, hopelessness, negativity, mediocrity and defeatism.
A female badger
just entering her sett in the pouring rain.
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