Pets have a great support in this country, vet practices providing every thing required, from parasite treatment to surgery, pain relief, antibiotics and health care on a par to our own. Wild species by default, are wild! Live and die by the laws of the wild and should not be interfered with in any way.
This is, in fact true for millions and millions of species of animals and birds that live among us without constraints of human intervention. Yet today, space has become a privilege, hunting land has become carved with roadways and domestic habitation, and we simply cannot avoid acceptance that our ‘wild animals and birds’ are in the news daily for being under pressure by our burgeoning growth.
The fox had fully established an alternative life in the urban jungle because there simply was not enough room and food elsewhere. They have exploited our failings, living off our copious waste and using our constructions for protection and shelter. However Badger is currently under the cosh as it wears the badge of ‘disease carrier’, has managed to use its protective government shield to establish well in places and yet, behind closed doors has become yet another detested pest, quietly persecuted.
Hedgehog has all but disappeared! where once many a flat one was common, there are none to be seen, alive or dead! with no explanation, albeit Badger gets blamed for that one too, even though their biggest competition with Hedgehog is foraging for worms, the staple diet of both.
These are of course the very visual examples of our larger mammals. Looking to the small ones, they face bated poison traps in every direction, only feet apart in the cities, or blanket spreads in the rurals that support commercially viable income. Spikes, wires, traps and Hawks are used to do their best to persuade the simple bird to keep away, resulting in infected feet, loss of limb and slow death, once again, a tribute to the lacking kindness that we fail so see.
Birds of Prey fall foul of many of the trappings of the above. Existence is, for them, simple. Food! as without it there is no life. Small mammals who have fed on poison are consumed by the Birds of Prey, who in turn suffer the consequences of a somewhat dilute poisoning effect. The rest is pretty straight forward, not so pretty and so the answer is yes!! Birds of Prey do deserve to be rescued, treated and released, in fact every resource I can get my hands on will ensure that this is a commonly known option. Once you peel back the layers of reason and outcome, it is not hard to see that every patient seen so far holds the scars of incident that was caused by humans, whether intentional or not, it feels like a responsibility that many more of us should take quite seriously, as once they become extinct, our future generations will never have the pleasure of knowing that we shared this odd planet with such beauty, suddenly the dinosaurs don’t seem so far away…