Otter magic
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Otters are adorable 😁
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And this is The Ottery. It's true otters have returned to the Thames
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I am looking forward to seeing beavers spread across the country again! They are doing well in the few trial rivers
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Absolutely. Not so sure about wolves and lynx. I love both to pieces but I'm someone who used to go hiking in lonely places, such as the Highlands
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I think Lynx's would be okay. They tend to stay away from humans. I don't actually know of any reports of it attacking any humans, even children. The main concern is livestock like sheep, which I'm personally okay with. Farmers can be compensated if it happens, but biodiversity important. They can prey on deer, which have no predators in the UK and need to be population controlled by human intervention, which isn't ideal.
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There's already a shortage of lamb! I don't think a few predators would make much difference but should sheep be savaged and terrorized? Not their fault they're on the Welsh hills or wherever. Deer it may be kinder to shoot them than have them brought down by the pack
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While I agree with your points, I think it's important to try and let nature manage itself as much as possible. We already intervene so much, and they used to live here and had a place in the ecosystem which we damaged.
I don't think your opinion is wrong just the clarify, and everything you've said is quite right. I just still think it's on us to try and fix at least some of the damage we've caused to nature. Including animals which have been made locally extinct.
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True, true. I was just wondering about the numbers actually, would you happen to know, must look it up. What I'm babbling about is it occurs to me wolves might be a pretty inefficient way of culling deer if there weren't enough of them; wondering whether it's been worked out what the ratio would have to be.
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I don't think wolves would be great, they can sometimes attack humans. Lynxes however, they're fairly small, little to no records of attacking humans. They generally stay far from human settlements.
I remember I once went to a spanish zoo which had a lynx exhibition. I couldn't even see them because they just don't want to be seen!
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Gorgeous! And such a magnificent thick coat. Spain? Pyrenees? I'd think southern England might be too warm for them but I'm sure they'd thrive further north. Must confess to doing this after I'd been up on the Downs and it became foggy….
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i would be more concerned about the spreading of tb introducing wild animals that would eat deer lambs ect that have a high tb rate roaming the countryside would in a few years be worse than culling the badgers
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It was actually in southern Spain! Though, southern Spain is quite mountainous and not too hot. I believe proposals to introduce them to the UK is to do it in the Highlands. That is probably the place they will be least likely to have humans and farming interacting with them. It's only been several hundred years since they were hunted to extinction in the UK.
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Apart from prey animals, would lynx compete with the Scottish wildcat, which is critically endangered, apparently by hybridization, interbreeding with domestic moggies, though I don't think of feral domestic cats straying into the wilderness. It's interesting.
@michael57 I don't know anything about TB in wildlife, I'll look it up.
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just another thought i do wonder how the wild cat would cope with the lynx being a rather larger animal
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I have read that they've looked into doing studies about that as that is one of the last question marks to the whole thing that we aren't sure of!
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@michael57 @Jimm_Scope A lot of links (lynx?) didn't want to tell me about TB at all, but about a kind of toxoplasma that infects wolves, but I did find one thing I thought was interesting. Some animals, such as the badger and the wild boar, perpetuate TB and in that situation wolves are great, wonderful, fabulous because they prey on wild boar and slow the spread of TB.
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thats all well and good but the problem then would be the wolves would predate on the sheep lambs suckling calves etc one of very few wild animals that will not get eaten by prey is a dead badger carcase in my working life as a herdsperson i have only ever worked on one farm that never failed a tb test in 15 years the cows grazed as nature intended and were loose housed in the winter with ample room to lay as natural as possible i have also milked 1000 cow herd that never ever went outside in there life and the tb rate was at least 40 head every test intensive farming is as much to blame as anything if not more and as long as the farmers get compensation from the government there not out of pocket that much so there not overly concerned
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Just wanted to say I like otters they are lovely.
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I used to volunteer at a local aquarium and I have little scars on my legs from where the otters nipped my ankles on the first day I met them. 😆 Savage little critters, but very cute and smart.
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ah they thought you was the appetizer
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