The Wild Side of Town

.... As we have increasingly encroached and built on their habitats they have had to adapt to our built environment .....

If you have been following some of the news items recently you might get the impression that our wildlife has suddenly become dangerous; everywhere you go some animal, reptile or even insect has been inflicting harm on the human species, perhaps finally taking out some revenge for the havoc we create in their environment.

Now I fully accept that it is shocking to find that your young children have been attacked by a fox in their own home, or that being dive-bombed by angry herring gulls is, to say the least, disconcerting. Being bitten by an adder is something I would rather not experience while the rashes caused by the hair of a moth caterpillar can be painfully irritating. These incidents have all generated media interest recently and, not unusually, the over reaction to them has been completely out of scale with the events themselves.

Taking the fox and herring gull stories first, both these species are born survivors. As we have increasingly encroached and built on their habitats they have had to adapt to our built environment which they have done very successfully. They also take advantage of our slovenly ways thriving on the rubbish we leave around our towns and cities.  Living alongside these animals can inevitably lead to occasional conflict which reached a climax recently when a fox was reported attacking two young children in their house in London a few weeks ago. To my knowledge this is the first time that this has happened and I am sure it will be an isolated incident and is not the precedent for renegade foxes to start habitually attacking people at random and also should not precipitate a mass cull, as I have heard proposed.

I know that herring gulls can be a nuisance around our coastal towns, mainly because of their noisy early morning vocal exercises which are more effective than any alarm clock. Like foxes, herring gulls have adapted well to city life, our buildings are very acceptable cliffs to them providing numerous nesting opportunities on which to raise a family. Like all parents they are very protective of their young, who when they leave the nest, tend to go wandering near to humans, triggering attacks on us by aggressive adults which is very uncomfortable. There is growing campaign to try and ‘get rid’ of our urban gulls ranging from trying to discourage nesting to direct culling - a completely pointless exercise.

One story that has made the papers locally is concerns about the caterpillars of the brown-tailed moth, a creature that is clad in over a million hairs that it releases as a defence mechanism and can cause nasty skin rashes as well as trigger asthmatic attacks. They are easy to identify as they make tents in which the caterpillars develop, and therefore can be easily avoided.

In response to some local concerns relating to incidents of contact with these caterpillars, they are now under threat from the removal of their habitat, thereby destroying a place on which many other wildlife species depend for their survival.

Our initial reaction to destroy wildlife that comes in conflict with us is symptomatic of our disconnection with the environment. Wildlife scares us; wildlife gone bad must be got rid of. But we actually live in a very benign wildlife environment, the most dangerous species we come across are wasps; the anaphylactic response to wasp stings in a tiny minority of cases can cause real medical concerns.

Far better to find out and understand our wildlife, learn and know what is dangerous and leave it alone, and just be a bit more ready willing and able to live alongside our wildlife and you never know, we might get to learn our to like our new urban neighbours.

Mike Russell
Head of People and Wildlife
Sussex Wildlife Trust
www.sussexwt.org.uk

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