Foxes are not dangerous to humans or pets, as there are no known cases of disease transmission from foxes in Britain, making the fear surrounding them largely unfounded. This inaugural episode of the Wildlife Matters podcast, hosted by Nigel Palmer, explores the misconceptions about foxes and highlights the urgent issues surrounding wildlife welfare, particularly the culling of badgers and the disturbing practice of canned hunting in South Africa. Listeners will learn about a recent study that reveals the ineffectiveness of badger culling in reducing bovine TB rates, which has led to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of these animals since 2013. The episode also delves into the plight of captive lions and the exploitation they face, drawing attention to the ethical implications of such practices. Join Nigel as he unravels these critical topics, aiming to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation for wildlife conservation.

In this first episode, we delve into the topic of whether or not foxes pose a threat to humans, which we previously discussed in our blog titled "Are Foxes Dangerous?" You can access the blog post through this link: https://wildlife-matters.org/002-are-foxes-dangerous/.

Furthermore, we shed light on the disturbing practice of breeding lions for hunting purposes. To learn more, you can read our blog post here: https://wildlife-matters.org/captive-lions-bred-for-the-bullet/.

We also provide a roundup of wildlife stories making headlines this week and offer a moment of relaxation with some of the best wildlife audio.

Although we have covered a lot in our first episode, we promise to bring you even more interesting facts in Episode 2 where we will defend the grey squirrel.

In the premiere of Wildlife Matters, Nigel Palmer embarks on an insightful exploration into the dynamics between wildlife conservation and human intervention, particularly focusing on the contentious issue of badger culling in the UK. Following a recent study that demonstrates the ineffectiveness of badger culling in reducing bovine tuberculosis (bTB) rates in cattle, Palmer unveils the ethical implications of this policy, which has led to the deaths of approximately 175,000 badgers since its initiation in 2013. The episode scrutinizes the responses from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), which attempted to counter the study's findings with flawed data. This segment not only sheds light on the scientific and ethical dimensions of wildlife management but also encourages listeners to question the motivations behind such government policies that harm wildlife under the pretense of disease control.

Transitioning into the second half of the episode, Palmer delves into the harrowing realities of the canned hunting industry in southern Africa, a practice that has become alarmingly prevalent in recent years. The podcast reveals the stark contrast between the wild and captive lion populations, highlighting how captive lions are bred and raised for the express purpose of being hunted by wealthy individuals. Palmer paints a vivid picture of the suffering endured by these lions, who are often deprived of natural behaviors and subjected to brutal conditions. The discussion urges listeners to reflect on the ethical ramifications of such exploitation and calls for an end to practices that prioritize profit over the welfare of animals. By emphasizing the need for genuine conservation efforts, the episode serves as a powerful reminder of the responsibility we hold in protecting wildlife and their habitats.

Takeaways:

• The podcast discusses the fallacy of urban foxes being dangerous to humans, emphasizing that there are no known cases of disease transmission from foxes in the UK.
• A recent study reveals that culling badgers has not effectively reduced bovine TB rates, despite governmental insistence on its necessity.
• In Southern Africa, the canned hunting industry exploits lions, raising ethical concerns about breeding and hunting practices that contribute to their decline.
• Captive lions face severe welfare issues as they are bred for hunting and photo opportunities, leading to a life of suffering and exploitation.
• The risk of being bitten by a fox is significantly lower than that of dog or cat bites, highlighting the misinformation surrounding urban wildlife.
• The podcast calls for a reevaluation of wildlife policies, especially regarding badger culling and the treatment of captive lions.

Links referenced in this episode:

• www.wildlife-matters.org

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of the Wildlife Matters podcast with me, Nigel Palmer.

I'm your host and I'm hoping you're going to join me as we take a look over the next few weeks and delve into the fascinating world of wildlife both here in the UK and around the world.

In this first episode, we're going to look at dispelling that old myth that are foxes dangerous, and also take a glimpse at the bile trade known as canned hunting, where lions are bred for the bullet in South Africa.

So grab yourself a cupboard comfy seat and I hope you'll join us.

But first, let's take a look at what's been happening in the wildlife world this week with Nature news.

In today's wildlife Matters Nature news, we're going to look at a recent study that's come out that's found that the killing badgers hasn't meaningfully assisted in lowering bovine TB rates in capital.

Defra did respond quickly to this study, accusing the authors of all manner of wrongdoing, including manipulating data.

But it turned out that the data Defra used to counter the study's findings was in itself flawed.

Ecologist Tom Langton, veterinarian doctor Ian McGill, and Bourne Freeze, head of policy doctor Mark Jones carried out the study.

They have all consistently opposed the cull on ethical, scientific and ecological grounds.

The author's study focused on the high risk areas in relation to bovine TB.

These areas amount to around 30% of England.

The study compared BTB rates, both confirmed and suspected, in cow herds in areas that had badger killing and those that didn't.

It derived much of its data from the government's own statistics.

Tom Langton explained that the statistics showed a levelling of and decrease in BTB rates across much of the high risk areas over the last decade or so.

However, the study indicated that this pattern endured regardless of when each county introduced badger culling.

Instead of killing the badgers, it pointed to cow focused measures such as bovine TB testing as being responsible for the reductions in the disease.

Defra's chief veterinary officer, Christine Middlemiss, and their chief scientific advisor Gideon Henderson, were quick to write a letter of revoking this study in the vet record.

In fact, in a further blog, Christine Middlenish shared Depra's own calculations on how areas were killing compared to those without.

But middle misses data was flawed, defere wrote to Langton in May to highlight that it had used incorrect calculations in the rebuttal, but this had followed weeks of pressure from the study's authors to get the data released behind its claims.

Deferent apologized.

However, it asserted that the flaw hadn't impacted on the rebuttal's overall argument.

The study's authors say that the revision vindicates their findings as it narrows the gap between BTB rates in cold versus on cold areas that Defra initially suggested existed.

As doctor Mark Jones explained, we saw no difference between cold and uncolled areas.

Defra has gone out of its way to try and discredit our study, but its own corrected calculations now appear to corroborate our findings.

Defra should hold its hands up and apologise, but more importantly, no further badgers should have to lose their lives for the sake of this ineffective, inhumane, unscientific and unnecessary policy.

Tom Langton has called on Defra to apologise, saying that in our study, our study is robust and has had four independent expert peer reviewers approved it prior to its publication.

Defra's rebuttal, on the other hand, is unverified, not peer reviewed, and we know is based on false data.

In a written response to Defra following its admission, all three authors called for an immediate suspension of badger killing pending a review of the government policy.

It seems Defras rush to rebuke the study's conclusions suggest to us that getting the department to candidly review its own policy is not going to be easy.

The British Veterinary association, however, is conducting a review of the position in light of the new evidence.

Currently, the BVA broadly supports Defra's policy, but objects to the cruel way in which most badgers are being killed.

Coal companies kill the vast majority of badgers by free shooting, meaning that people shoot them in the open.

This is typically less accurate than killing them in a controlled setting, and it risked them dying slowly and in great pain.

As the badger trust have stated, this does not inspire us with any confidence.

The study's authors did acknowledge its limitations, one of which was the government's failure to disclose the culling area boundaries.

However, it was based on an exhaustive probe, and it concluded that Cal focused measures, not badger killing, are responsible for the reductions in bovine TB.

Defra's flawed and furious response will do little to inspire confidence that the government's forthcoming research that the coals use into the coal's usefulness will be either vigorous or impartial.

Defa have really been caught out here.

A government department refusing to release information and then releasing misleading studies shows a clear intent to skew the data to support the government policy of killing badgers.

That does not reduce the incidence of bovine TB in cattle.

Wildlife matters thinks that death.

Prime Minister George Eustace should now immediately suspend the culling of badgers and explain to the house how and why those mistakes were made.

That's been this week's nature news.

We will look into this study and follow its progress.

Welcome back.

And today in today's anything ghost, we're going to take a look at the canned hunting and captive lion industries that are prevalent in southern Africa, where lions once roamed over most parts of the world, including Africa, North America and Eurasia.

Today they are restricted to the savannah and grassy plains of Africa and to a very small area of western India.

There are about 20,000 lions in the wild today, but 100 years ago, that figure was around 200,000.

In fact, few animal species have suffered such a catastrophic decline in their populations.

Lions are the only truly social cat.

They live in groups called prides.

Prides are made up of a single male.

Although they can have groups of males and are up to around 20 females and their offspring, the male's role is to defend the females and the territory from other males and the competition is fierce.

A male's average tenure over a pride is only around two to three years.

Whilst groups of males do do better than them.

A lone male.

South Africa is the only country to have three designations for its lion populations.

These are wild, managed and captive, whilst wild populations continue to suffer a catastrophic decline.

It's true to say that these lines are bribed for the bullet because they are sold to hunting companies who offer the wealthy us and european hunters the guarantee of shooting a lion, albeit within an enclosure from which it cannot escape.

These lions are not wild.

They're farmed, often too closely bred, and are considered tame to humans, having been petted as cubs.

Tragically, lionesses have become as valuable to breeders as the males used for trophies in trophy hunting, the lionesses bones are now sold to Asia to be used in traditional asian medicine as a replacement for tiger bones.

Captive bred lions suffer appallingly.

They are removed from their mothers within a day to be hand reared by humans.

They are used in petting parks, spurning millions of selfies for social media.

Once they have grown too big to pet, they take part in lion walks with the public before they are then sold on to the hunting companies to be shot either as trophies or for their body parts.

The captive animals are deprived of their natural environment with little or any stimuli or enrichment.

They live their lives in mundane and barren cages.

The animals become frustrated, unenriched and bored, and many develop zucosis.

Zucosis was a term first used by Bill Travers, co founder of the Born Free foundation, to describe the obsessive, repetitive behavior of zoo animals.

Many of these animals have abnormal mother infant relationships.

Mothers often will attack, abandon or even kill their offspring or their mothers wean offspring too soon or maybe too late.

Prolonged infantile behaviour, where animals do not mature properly or acquire destructive social behaviours, such as excessive crying, lack of social confidence, a lack of secondary sexual characteristics, abnormal aggressive behaviour in terms of intensity and frequency, or directed to the wrong individuals or objects.

This is all a result of overcrowding, threats by social dominance or isolation from companions.

In captivity, lions face a number of challenges for which evolution has not prepared them.

The climate, diet, size and characteristics of the enclosure are completely alien to them and how they have evolved to exist in the wild.

Captive bread lions have no control over their environment.

They do not carry out evolved behaviors which are aimed at enhancing their welfare or survival prospects.

Instead, they rely on humans to provide for their physical, social and biological needs.

The captive environment leads to a deterioration in the lion's both physical and mental health.

Here at wildlife matters, we want to see an end to captive lion breeding and canned hunting in southern Africa and all around any other countries where it takes place.

Captive bred lions have no benefit to conservation and cannot be released back to the wild.

Although lion breeders and captive lion facilities claim that lionesses do not look after their cubs well, the truth is that cubs are often forcibly removed from their mothers, often after just one day, all for some extra cuddles and so that they can have their photos taken for social media.

It's really not true that lions are not very good parents.

They are and will fiercely protect their cubs.

Removal of cubs is so traumatic for the lioness and the cubs.

The breeders that enable human interactions for profit are only fulfilling a recreational role.

Countless selfies have no educational value at all.

Conservation message the people visiting these petting centres can only learn one thing, and that is that wild animal can be controlled for human entertainment.

Not only is this exploitation, exploitation of lions for commercial gain, but it's harmful to the cubs too.

They can only be fully vaccinated at the age of twelve weeks.

Any human interaction prior to that exposes the cubs to the extremely high risk of catching diseases from domestic animals such as dogs and cats.

These cubs are not pets and they're not working animals.

They are wild animals.

Uncontrolled breeding and inbreeding have led to a range of genetic malformations in captive lions.

These are so bad that the lions were released or escaped into the wild.

They would compromise the genetic integrity of the wild populations.

There is also huge risk of disease introduction to the wild populations.

Lions are bred intensively to ensure a ready supply of lions for the petting, hunting and asian medicine markets.

These tragic animals are exploited from birth until their premature deaths.

Cant hunting and the commercial breeding of lions to support the hunters blood loss and take the dollars from from them is a cruel and exploitative industry that threatens the declining populations and could see the extinction of the magnificent big cat species in our own lifetimes.

Make no mistake, lion breeding and can hunting is conservation and it's time to end this wild trade and end the lion farms.

Wildlife matters has been born from a passion and lifelong love of wildlife and the natural world.

We have over 20 years of experience working for wildlife and conservation charities here in the UK and in Africa and Asia, with experience in woodland management and horticulture.

Our love of plants and trees, in fact all flora, should be clear.

But wildlife is our real passion.

Working on species conservation, habitat management here in the UK and internationally, as as working on the front line in busy wildlife rescue.

We have over two decades of direct action against hunters and anyone who persecutes wildlife for so called sport.

Our experience and knowledge are as broad and diverse as they are varied and that's why we're hoping that you will support us by following the podcast.

You can visit our website at www.

Dot wildlife hyphenmatters.org and subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcast from.

Be that apple, Spotify, Amazon, all the major platforms.

It really does help if you leave us the review and do come visit the website and see what we're doing.

We look forward to hearing from you soon and welcome back.

So we're going to be taking a look into the age old question.

Are foxes dangerous to us or do they pose some sort of a health risk?

Well, in fact, there is no known case of people catching diseases from foxes or their droppings in Britain.

You are vastly more likely to catch an infection from your pet dog or cats.

So what about foxes?

Well, let's just have a quick look into what we know.

Most people that have seen a fox have probably just seen one animal on its own.

And indeed, foxes travel and hunt on their own, so they are known to be solitary animals.

This is not to say that they avoid other foxes, but to exemplify the fact that foxes do not hunt impacts like some other canies, such as wolves.

For a long time, it was believed that foxes lived a solitary life, meeting only during the mating season.

But that is now proven to be untrue.

The dominant male and female will form a pair that will last for life.

Foxes are generally monogamous.

The pair travel, hunt and feed independently, but occasionally meet either briefly or for longer periods during which they play or groom each other.

In some areas, such as in urban areas, it is common for some other adult foxes to be present.

In addition to the breeding pair.

These additional animals, sometimes known as helpers, are subordinate to the dominant pair and are often offspring of them which have remained with their parents past the normal age of dispersal.

So in certain conditions, it could be true that foxes live in small social groups.

Foxes are territorial animals.

They defend the area where they live against other foxes.

That said, the use of scent markings to limit their own space is a very effective way of communicating with neighbours, and they normally avoid meeting each other.

If the neighbours do meet, these encounters are generally benign, avoiding direct fights.

Foxes are more aggressive towards strange foxes rather than other neighbouring ones.

Because of this territorial behavior, if a fox is removed for a length of time from its territory, another fox will soon move in.

This means that eliminating one animal from an area does not eliminate the presence of foxes altogether.

So, will a fox attack my dog or cat?

Well, this is extremely unlikely.

Foxes avoid dogs, even small dogs, because many, many foxes are killed by dogs every year.

So it is much more likely that your dog will attack the fox, not the other way around.

Attacks on cats are equally rare.

Cats and foxes are roughly the same size and cats are very capable of defending themselves against foxes.

So it's hardly surprising that foxes generally give cats a very wide burp and will flee when threatened.

Keeping your cat indoors at night greatly reduces the chances of an encounter with a fox.

There are also a variety of other benefits, such as cats kept in at night are healthier, live longer, and, of course, they kill far less local wildlife mice, voles, birds, etcetera.

There are many cats and foxes in the UK, and it's very rare to lose a cat to a fox.

Cats kill cats and cats can be run over and foxes will eat a dead cat, as they are the bin men of the wild world and clear up carrion.

So, can foxes hurt children?

However, the evidence is that no child in Britain has been killed or severely injured in the years ever since foxes colonized our cities.

There are occasional relatively minor incidents involving foxes and children, invariably described by the press as an attack, although it is very unlikely that a fox deliberately seeks out a child to attack it.

In contrast, every year children are severely injured, maimed and tragically even killed by dogs, very often their own pets, and not just larger or more larger breeds.

The risk posed by dogs vastly outweighs the risk posed by foxes.

So in the UK, what animals are most likely to bite you?

We've used the NHS website to source this information.

And the NHS website states there are three most common causes of bites in the UK are 80% of the bites treated by the NHS are dog bites, 15% of bites treated by the NHS are cat bites and 5% of bites treated by the NHS are human bites.

And for accuracy and clarity, the NHS does not mention fox bites in the report at all.

So let's just do a little analysis on the figures provided by the NHS.

The total number of bites required that required hospital treatment in England is eight and a half thousand.

To put that into context, adders, the only venomous snake in the UK bites around 100 people a year.

Let's finish with a conclusion based on facts.

As a UK resident, you are 600 times more likely to be bitten by a dog, 187 times more likely to be bitten by a cat, and incredibly, 62 times more likely to be bitten by another human being than you are than being bitten by a fox.

So let's stop the propaganda lies intended to demonize foxes and create uncertainty in our urban communities.

Foxes are not a threat to you, your children or your pets.

Don't always believe what you read in the newspapers because this proves that they don't always have the facts or indeed tell the truth.

We do hope you're enjoying this episode of Wildlife, the podcast.

Coming up next week, we're going to be looking into the persecution of grey squirrels here in the UK and diving deep into the oceans to look at plastic pollution and what sort of an impact it's having on the environment, the marine animals and of course ourselves.

But now we'd like to introduce a new feature that we're going to put in which is called mindful moments, a time just to sit back and listen to a sound from nature.

And this week is the beautiful recording of a vixen.

Sit back, enjoy it.

We'll see you on the other side.

And so that brings us to the end of this very first episode of the Wildlife Matters podcast.

We really hope you enjoyed it, learned something new and we'll go on to share this podcast with your friends.

Leave us a review like it and let's get some more people involved.

We're a community we're building here and we really want everybody to be a part of it.

But for now, this is me, Nigel Palmer, wildlife matters signing out.