BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ficedula" data-source="post: 1709291" data-attributes="member: 81108">I cannot agree, natural does not = harmless and anyway GB semi-natural habitats are highly anthropogenic. The origin of the GB EO's will have no bearing on the damage they might or might not do, they are all EO's and will affect their prey and competitor species identically however they got here.The first and most important question to be answered (the horse of your metaphor) is will EO's cause harm to GB fauna measurably greater than the harm caused by other historically established species (however they got here) that we are happy to tolerate. Those in favour of a cull must show that the substantially equivalent faunas on the near continent where EO's have recently arrived or increased have been effected detrimentally to a significant degree. As far as i know this has not been shown.However this question is resolved the origin of the GB EO's is irrelevant, if EO's are going to lead to the extinction in GB of (eg) Golden Eagles then they must go. If they are going to affect Golden eagles no more than do WT Eagles then there is no justification for a cull. Their "naturalness" or otherwise should not impinge on this assessment.I would like to suggest that this concern for the natural origins is a particular fetish of birdwatchers because of the "tickability" factor. The GB EO population is of mixed origin, some are known escapes, most are of unknown origin and it is a reasonable assumption that a few got here under their own steam. Even if ringing recovery proved the latter it would not suddenly convert all GB EO's into indigenous.</blockquote>

Verification