UKH

As hill walkers, how important is it for you to see our native wildlife flourish while out on the hill? Wildlife crime has increased 12% on last year with badger related crime up 66% and raptor persecution in Scotland doubling!!! Illegal trapping and snaring, poisoning, hare coursing, badger baiting and more goes on right under our noses. What do you think can be done to stop it? Increasing sentences for those found guilty would maybe work, but conviction rates are very, very low as its so hard to prove guilt!!! Would raising public awareness help towards reducing it? Do people know the difference between a legally and illegally set trap? Do you know who and how to contact the relevant authorities if you see something suspicious?

With climate change filling our news feeds, how do we continue to thrive as a species without killing our planet? The most common animal we see while out on the hill, is without a doubt, a sheep. We have 23 million sheep in the UK, leaving our uplands as an 'overgrazed' desert. Those 23 million sheep only account for less than 1% of our food in calorific terms. To produce just 4kg of beef has about the same carbon footprint as a flight from London to New York and back!!!!! Globally, we produce enough food to feed the population about 3 times over. We pay farmers subsidies to help them!! Why cant we pay them the same subsidies to "rewild" some of their land. Planting trees, looking after water courses, encouraging more wildlife. This would help climate control and also give us hill walkers  a far more enjoyable day out. Stop draining our moorlands, reintroduction of beavers would help to prevent flooding downstream. Stop 'Muirburn' damaging our peat-lands and releasing massive amounts of locked in carbon back into the atmosphere. 

Wouldn't it be amazing to walk our hills knowing that you are going to see golden eagles soaring above your heads, hen harriers skydancing trying to impress a potential mate, mad March hares 'boxing' at dawn, the sounds of skylark, cuckoo and curlew a common thing. Our rivers full of salmon and teeming with life. Foxes living happily without fear of the local hunt chasing them down. The list goes on. 

We are so far removed from nature that we treat it with complete and utter contempt yet it is the very thing which sustains our life.So much for European/Asian cultural intelligence. Without getting into detail about the current 6th mass extinction of species It is also heartbreaking to see wildlife habitats in the UK reduced to mere fragmented and isolated patches here and there. And what is left for them is scoured by us in the form of vehicle traffic, people who kill them for fun or wander into wild places and disturb the little sanctuary they have.Extreme situations like the ones we have created everywhere require extreme measures to initially rectify and restore balance with mother nature once more. 

We need many huge designated areas that humans are banned from entering other than for discreet monotoring/studying purposes. These areas should be planted where possible with many tens or hundreds of millions of trees - but in such a way that forest fires can't destroy the lot- and patrolled by a large army of security guards all vegan/vegetarian. Anyone who illegally enters must be hammered by law but they won't as future education programs will ensure everyone sees wildlife and their habitat as sacrosanct and sacred.

This combined with a global program to reduce the world's population by having no more than one or perhaps two weans maximum and a world socialist post-capitalist system to stop poverty and wealth inequality in a world that has either gone through the stage of capitalism or has seen the best technology created by capitalism spread throughout the world and the worst rejected. Everyone will make do with considerably less than we currently have ie. Use public transport for practically all travel, trains for haulage, no consumer led society. No more waste food and throw away culture, every item will be made from natural or recycled materials and made to last as long as possible with no built in obsolescence. 

Through education programs where ethics come first not the market, removing of all poverty, proper spiritual practice (not religious) and removing all global and national power from a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals, corporations and nations and giving it to the needs of everyone and every sentient being we can build a sustainable ethical model of life for the planet that will help everyone and enrich our lives immeasurably. 

That however would encroach on people's freedom and liberty to do whatever they want within a law that is designed to let them do whatever they want, in a democracy that is controlled by those who do whatever they want. 

I was with you up to this sentence, I don't understand it.

F*ck with grouse moors, destroy snares, bury feed, destroy feeding stations, smash up Larsen traps.

Take photos, don’t get caught.

Good rant.  I thoroughly agree.  I despaired after a recent post on a Weardale Facebook group where every man and their dog (bar 2) were chiming in to defend the burning of the Heather moors.  The unsubstantiated crap about the “natural tree line” being around 300 m various people posted was quite something.  

We have a badger set in the corner of our plot.  Apparently scum from t’other end of the village baited then some time before we bought the place.  No others have moved in since

I suppose that depends if “something suspicious” is a dodgy trap, or a rambling hiker disabling said trap on their way past... ?

Hiya. Basically trying to show that by putting personal individual freedom, a rule of law and political/economic system run by the powerful few to perpetuate this, as sacrosanct and sacred we are where we are. 

I don't want to sound preachy btw as I am as guilty as the rest when it comes to these matters. I just like to throw in radical ideas as I see things and if some are helpful then all the better.

To get a bit metaphysical for a moment. 

This issue with the way we treat animals which is a part of the whole way we live collectively and the subsequent consequences of that could be the result of our worship of science and ego rather than our true nature.The fact we have become collectively further away and dismissive of our true nature could mean that the only way we collectively realise our true nature is to push ourselves as a species to annihilation.

All because of ego and an extreme worship of science being all there is whilst dismissing our true being which sees all life as sacred. 

Go on, I'm intrigued. 

Man, thats funny - what will these vegan security guards be armed with - locally produced tofu?

They will be paid peanuts for the work.

Your surely not advocating paying them in imported peanuts, think of the carbon footprint of these nuts.

(and yes, I am aware you can grow peanuts in the UK, its just that we don't, at present - and where would we grow them if land is changed to wildlife habitats)

Hello?