A new Animal Aid report – With Extreme Prejudice: the culling of British wildlife

With Extreme Prejudice: the culling of British wildlife examines the motivations behind the killing of more than 20 different so-called ‘alien’, ‘pest’ and ‘predatory’ animals and birds. And it criticises the intolerance of a society that considers animals so worthless, their lives can be snuffed out if they are deemed to be noisy, messy, or unsightly, or if their presence is simply unwanted.

The 62-page, fully-illustrated report calls for a shift in how society thinks about wildlife and urges it learns tolerance for animals, whose lives are already threatened by development, habitat loss, industrialised farming, climate change and road traffic. The report also examines the history of changing fashions in conservation and denounces the personal prejudices of certain conservation groups that order culls of one species because they wish to boost numbers of another.

Says report author and Animal Aid Head of Campaigns, Kate Fowler-Reeves:

‘Intolerance of wild species is now so great that mass killings are rarely even commented on. Animals and birds are persecuted for daring to feed themselves and rear offspring; or for being introduced to, or abandoned in, an area where they naturally would not live. They are shot, poisoned, trapped and snared for living in what is left of their fast-dwindling habitat or for adapting to a landscape that – thanks to human intervention – is changing rapidly. But most of all, they are persecuted because they pose a financial threat to industries and ‘sports’, many of which have as their primary objective the killing of other animals or birds.’