A lot of people feed foxes on my street. When Covid started the foxes started to starve as everyone stayed inside and was worried about human food supply. It wasn't pretty. They started coming into my house (in London) looking for food and would come to the hand, if you wanted it to.
I don't feed them for the reasons given here. I don't get mushy and sentimental about 'wildlife'. Urban fox populations are doing very well without being fed. Rural ones, not so much.
I imagine people on this thread are making an exception for garden birds and hedgehogs - it's ok to feed them? Just wondering what you're take is - after the theme of "don't feed wild animals, it doesn't help the populations, long term".
There's a debate in Galloway over the reintroduction of Golden Eagles. There isn't a sufficient prey source (hare and grouse habitat has been planted upon) their range has been limited to narrow channels of hills (again due to agriculture and conifer plantations) and I believe there's only 2 pairs surviving by a regular feeding regime at undisclosed locations.
These aren't truly wild birds. They are unable to sustain a population or spread from the restricting hill range. And if they do, they stray to moors with ample food sources unfortunately owned by Game Farmers, where the Eagles are persecuted. Yet the game farmers are managing the land which Eagles need far better than the forestry commission. It's a catch-22.
Yet I still took great joy in watching one in the Galloway Hills last year and it would be a shame for these great birds to disappear from the southern Scotland landscape - so I support the feeding regime (with hopes that habitat management can be improved in the future).
In contrast, Galloway has a growing Wild Boar population. The forest park provides a good habitat for them where they have minimal contact with humans, are able to breed and raise young without fear of predators and their impact on local agriculture and fauna has been negligible. Are these not 'more wild' than the Golden Eagles? More at home in 'modern' Scotland? Yet nobody wants them there, because they dig up lawns and like deer, there is no plan for population control.
There's a debate in Galloway over the reintroduction of Golden Eagles... In contrast, Galloway has a growing Wild Boar population.
It's a fine balance, for sure. Another area (like Covid) where we have to hope sense, vision, data and science rules over emotion and historical grudges.
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
These aren't truly wild birds. They are unable to sustain a population or spread from the restricting hill range. And if they do, they stray to moors with ample food sources unfortunately owned by Game Farmers, where the Eagles are persecuted. Yet the game farmers are managing the land which Eagles need far better than the forestry commission. It's a catch-22.
Yet I still took great joy in watching one in the Galloway Hills last year and it would be a shame for these great birds to disappear from the southern Scotland landscape - so I support the feeding regime (with hopes that habitat management can be improved in the future).
In contrast, Galloway has a growing Wild Boar population. The forest park provides a good habitat for them where they have minimal contact with humans, are able to breed and raise young without fear of predators and their impact on local agriculture and fauna has been negligible. Are these not 'more wild' than the Golden Eagles? More at home in 'modern' Scotland? Yet nobody wants them there, because they dig up lawns and like deer, there is no plan for population control.