Lloyds To Insure All British Sheep Against Lynx Attacks

www.farminguk.com...

The agreement, with Lloyds Syndicate ARK Speciality Programs, is seen as an attempt to ease farmers' concerns surrounding the danger of reintroducing the lynx to the British countryside.

I've seen a prematurely rewilded lynx in the Forest of Dean. I found its scat a few weeks before I saw it, it had been eating beetles in desperation. I can't claim to be an expert on lynx body language but when I saw it the impression was of a depressed and lonely animal.

Ignorant townies brimming with book-learning are rewilding Britain with disastrous results. I wish they'd stay in their flipping ivory towers.

Two major points here.

Have you thought how psychologically upsetting this will be for the sheep? Keeping deer on the move through psychological pressure is the advantage. (We have more deer here since the ice age and it is an environmental problem.) Sheep will suffer the same psychological pressure. Animal cruelty.

Also. Experts in the field will tell you the native lynx was never fully exterminated. The cleverest survived and have evolved to avoid conflict with our essential farming needs. Or are you happy with your imported merino woolies and the ecological effects thereof?

We need locally sourced woolies to be warm and environmentally friendly. Half tame lynx will impact on this.

I'm moving this out of Fragile Earth and into Rant. This is almost as bad as the Terry's Chocolate Orange issue.

a reply to: Kester

hery - choccie oranges is important too - just in a different way

a reply to: Kester

ok - now serious reply

S&F - oh FFS - i find myself in near unanimous agreement with kester on another of his OPs

i am in favour of many re-wilding issues - but lynx ? you have got to be taking the piss

due to the fact that there are now 70 million humans living on this archipeligo [ and our 21st century infrastructure ] - there simply is not the range for a viable population of such a predator

now just to maintain cosmic order - i will disagree with ketster on on minor point :

sheep and deer :

the nessecity to evade a threat - does not really distress a deer that much - and there are few fences // walls that will stop a 18month + deer

OTOH - almost every wall // fence is deigned to be sheep proof [ in the real world - due to stupidity of sheep and bad maintainence - some sheep filter few a few fences ] - but while being chased sheep panik - and yes i have seen a dog run a section of a flock across a cattlegrid

the dog did not survive - and its owner who thought this amussing - required hospital treament [ but i digress ]

kester - can we not just " re-wild " these accedemic idiots back to a reservation somewhere in the congo basin - with no clothes tools etc etc ???

a reply to: Kester

I'm fascinated by your comment

" Experts in the field will tell you the native lynx was never fully exterminated. The cleverest survived and have evolved to avoid conflict with our essential farming needs."

As far as I can see on the web the lynx was reportedly exterminated 1,300 years ago in Britain. Where can I find the back-up for your comment as I'd love to know more.

I agree "re-wilding" isn't as cute or correct as painted. The 'wild' is certainly a different place now to what it was pre any extinction.

a reply to: Kester


I'm not quite sure what the big objection is here. They want to introduce 6 of them right? That seems pretty easy to deal with. We've got bobcats - lynx, bears, wolves, coyotes, rattle snakes and a bunch of other nasties running around in the US and it's dealt with.

Agree the reasoning seems a little stupid. So these creatures (I really dislike lynx, I think they're unsettling) haven't been around for a LONG time and suddenly it's imperative to bring them back? Why? Because of the deer population? Give out some more hunting licenses.

I like how one article I read said it would be millions in tourism. My ass. Those things are super elusive. I suppose if they let the average joe have tracker information perhaps it could be a boon to tourism. Kind of ruins it though.

I think it's a sort of useless plan, but I don't think anything drastic is going to happen to the sheep herders. Perhaps the sheep need not shake fearfully in their owners boots. At least not about the few cats that may be coming.

Both sides of this argument seem stupid. One a little more candyassed, one a little more stupid.

a reply to: Doxanoxa

You'll find many different estimates for when the native lynx was supposedly exterminated. You'll also find opinions like this from people like Eddie Bell.

www.chroniclelive.co.uk...

Durham police animal liaison officer . . .

"I believe that the lynxes could be a remnant of the native population that was thought to have been wiped out 600 years ago. "We know they are there because we have recovered lynx droppings from around Slaley, Northumberland, as well as lambs carcasses that were certainly killed by a cat."

I'll disagree with him on points like this.

. . . there are no indicators that animal carcasses are being found up trees."

Some posh people near my usual home in Gloucestershire found a dead sheep up a tree. They kept it quiet for a number of reasons. Not least you get thrill seekers turning up to hunt them when there's a credible sighting and the exact location is publicly revealed.

I suspect Eddie and others have been pressured to deny the black leopard issue.

Eddie has also said on average once a year he was called out to examine a kill that had three puncture wounds. It confused him because no known animal has teeth in such a configuration. Perhaps he hasn't considered the possibility of talons.

Gargoyles.

They hunt by sensing fear in humans lost in the mountains. Hovering at height in bad weather, they sense fear from many miles away.

Get lost on your own at night in the Brecon Beacons or other areas by all means.

But don't give in to fear.










More on Eddie here. books.google.co.uk... a=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMh6z1-MLWAhWpJ8AKHYChCwIQ6AEIVzAM#v=onepage&q=sgt%20eddie%20bell&f=false

It seems I missed the full story.

stv.tv...

Lloyd's of London has agreed to insure pets, sheep and humans against attacks . . .

Why would humans need to be covered?


Decimating small flocks isn't going to go down well with smallholders.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

These localized and year-to-year persistent hot spots represent the major lynx–livestock problem. In hot spots, lynx attacks can completely decimate the smallest flocks. Among the bigger flocks, only a minority suffered sheep losses up to 5% but these flocks were attacked almost every year. These losses, which made up about 50% of lambs and subadults, can lead to a loss of annual income, but the greatest problems are probably linked to the difficulty of herding. These large flocks often occupy vast and scrubby parks, situated near wooded hillsides far from human settlements. These conditions make the discovery of killed sheep more difficult. Furthermore, as has been established by radio-tracking studies (Warren & Mysterud 1990; Neale et al. 1998), very young lambs that are killed by predators are difficult to find. To limit their economic losses, i.e. for compensation to be paid, the breeders should regularly patrol their parks to collect the corpses of killed animals, which are often overlooked without a thorough search. In these hot spot areas, the year-to-year persistence of lynx predation may become a real handicap to the breeders.

Finding the dead stock before scavengers have obliterated signs of lynx predation isn't going to an easy task.

a reply to: Kester

Thanks for this.

I'd never heard of a 'kellas cat' before, so ignorance denied on that one!

Nice article.

To quote :

"These felines (kellas cats) are a genetic mix between Scottish wildcats and domestic cats. A weird quirk of genetics means that, if the hybrid has more genetic material from the smaller domestic moggy than the bigger wildcat, it grows even larger.

What's more, they are almost always black or dark in colouring, leading to possible cases of mistaken identity (with puma's).

I"m no biologist or vet, but it seems to me the kellas cat belongs here and now, where the lynx belonged here then and when.

All life should move on. Simply because we can introduce the lynx doesn't make it right or wise.

a reply to: Doxanoxa

Di Francis deserves great credit for her work in this area. She was horribly bullied over the years just for putting forward ideas.

scienceblogs.com...

. . . British felid fauna is more diverse than anyone thought likely just a few decades ago.

Life would be so much easier for academics if cats behaved themselves and fitted into the pigeonholes allotted to them.

One thing to watch for is there are many spooks posing as cat investigators whose job is to muddy the waters and ridicule witnesses and honest investigators.


In the link you'll find a non-working link to mastiff cats which have also been witnessed in the States by an ATS contributor, I don't remember who but they've commented on other of my cat threads.


How can the mastiff-headed cats be in the States and in Britain? I haven't got a clue. The black leopards seen in Australia, the States and Britain? Likewise, a mystery. Unless AnuTyr can tell us. www.abovetopsecret.com...