Halcyon River Diaries

What was really important was to see the recovery of Water Voles at Cheddar, where the Mink are controlled.

I felt for Charlie and Philippa, but we have to remember that Mink are an alien species here, and are not endangered whereas the Watervoles are a native endangered species.

I totally agree barman58. I was just pointing out how hard it is to destroy any life, whether it's a pest or not.

And who's fault is it, after all???

Pipit x

The greed of mankind to make a profit out of anything they can has been the cause of much suffering to the wildlife we share this planet with :-(

Hopefully we now live in a more enlightened age, though I fear there are still those intent in robbing our future generations of the treasures we still have

Again agree and we only have to look to China (one example) to prove what you say is correct in your last comment. I will never get over seeing the gruesome remains of a Tiger once the poachers had finished with it. (Land of the Tiger programme)

Pip

The curse of the mink is largely down to animal rights activists who raided all the mink farms, one of which was near to where I live, releasing them to the wild. This is why our river is overrun with them.

Unknown said:

Again agree and we only have to look to China (one example) to prove what you say is correct in your last comment. I will never get over seeing the gruesome remains of a Tiger once the poachers had finished with it. (Land of the Tiger programme)

Pip

Nature itself is trying it's best to thwart the poachers,, in Africa, for example, elephants are being born with smaller and smaller tusks with each generation, and it's possible that sometime in the future Elephants will be tuskless, removing the reason for killing them. The wonder of natural selection.

It's a shame that it does not work with humans  

I blame both the original fur traders and the misguided activists for the Mink problem

Hi Sparrow

You bring up another thorny issue.

Experimentation on animals is horrendous (some to make cosmetics!! but some for medical advancement, of course) and the animal activists do have a point, but often create a chain of events that can cause more damage in the long run.

Again, I say that my point was just to highlight the pain of decent, wildlife-loving people to ending the life of a wild animal.

Cheers

Pip

Unknown said:

Experimentation on animals is horrendous

I totally have to agree, thousands of animals killed each year just so that we can have the best cosmetics, and there are alternate ways of testing those stuffs, not harming anything.

I really shouldn't start going on and on and on about alien speices and animal testing as I will be here for an hour or two writing how I feel about it, but just one point to make - we humans can be rather selfish! We brought the minks, grey squirrels, japanese knotweed etc, now we are killing them. What have those animals done? Nothing bad, but now they're pests, just because we decided!