UK Nature and Environment

408 readers

70 users here now

General Instance Rules:

No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia.
No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users.
Do not share intentionally false or misleading information.
Do not spam or abuse network features.

Community Specific Rules:

Keep posts UK-specific. There are other places on Lemmy to post articles which relate to global environmental issues (e.g. slrpnk.net).
Keep comments in English so that they can be appropriately moderated.

Note: Our temporary logo is from The Wildlife Trusts. We are not officially associated with them.

Our autumn banner is a shot of maple leaves by Hossenfeffer.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Spiralling deer population 'devastating' UK nature - prompting calls to reintroduce wolves and lynx (news.sky.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A seemingly never-ending stream of deer bound across a main road, bringing traffic to a standstill. Two stags trot down a hospital corridor. A deer herd invades a surburban garden.

There's a new brand of wildlife video doing the rounds on social media - and the generally positive image enjoyed by the animals means the scenes may delight onlookers.

But many experts say the largely uncontrolled growth of Britain's deer population creates significant ecological dangers.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Defra is among the organisations highlighting problems caused by "excessive" deer grazing, including damage to crops, woodland, trees managed for timber and our natural biodiversity.

When large numbers of deer graze in woodland, it reduces plant and animal diversity - in turn affecting soil and releasing carbon, according to the Forestry Commission.

Common species including robin, wren and blackbird are less likely to be in woodland areas where there are deer, research by the British Trust for Ornithology shows, and vulnerable breeds such as nightingale, nightjar and woodcock are negatively impacted.

"When they're basically giving over more time to be vigilant, keeping an eye out for who might be creeping up on them, they're not foraging as effectively, which means they don't put on as much weight, they're not in such good breeding conditions, so that can reduce the birth rate."

It is difficult to predict how successful reintroducing predators would be as a measure of controlling the deer population, and there might be periods of time where it has a bigger or smaller impact, Dr Sandom says.

Read more from Sky News:Two horses die on first day of Cheltenham FestivalPeople with facial tattoos, piercings and beards wanted to help train guide dogs

The original article contains 786 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!