In the Todmorden paper it mentions one of our local landowners near Cross Stone, breeding exotic animals such as Wallabies, Ostriches and Nothern Elk. He also has 2 Muntjac Deer. He does this through his work running Live Animal Capture http://www.liveanimalcapture.co.uk/about-us.html
Muntjac Deer are very destructive. They will eat coppice shoots, natural regeneration, bluebell bulbs, primulas etc. In other parts of the country this non-native deer is causing considerable damage and because the female can be pregnant in any month of the year, populations can rise quickly.
There are Muntjac in South Yorkshire and I believe some near Shibden. Let's hope we don't get any breeding populations in the valley.
It looks like culling under licence may be the only answer in future for most species. What does venison taste like!
ReplyDeleteIt tastes very nice Bruce :) I get to go on a "bambi bashing" shooting trip to cull deer on an estate every year and nothing is ever wasted. Some goes to game dealers, the hide is cured and any offal is cooked up and fed to the dogs. All the best bits we get to eat :)
ReplyDeleteThe deer need to be culled otherwise they get to be too many and they starve or cause damage to arable crops. We killed off all the large predators in the UK so its then up to us to cull or let the poor things starve to death each winter.
Muntjac are a plague in some areas, beautiful little creatures but very destructive in large numbers. I seem to remember some landower or other thought it might be nice to have nice cute little North American Grey Squirrels on his estate and look where that got us !