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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Farnboro John" data-source="post: 1644181" data-attributes="member: 36432">Here we go - I knew this was too easy.Gareth, you seem to have a very strict view of what you are prepared to count and not count.  I guess it works for you, but by your standards in the bird line Canada Goose, Little Owl, Egyptian Goose and a number of other species that are a significant part of Britain's fauna would be uncountable.  Personally I find the deliberate ignoring of well established populations daft, and I will tell you why: with the possible exceptions of Brown Rat, Red Fox and European Rabbit all mammals exist in Britain by human fiat.  Nothing else exists out there except that we allow it to. Whatever we want to exterminate we can.  No inch of the landscape is unaltered by human influence. So even when we look at a native species (whatever that is) it isn't in a natural environment.Also, what we are trying for here is a working list, not an atlas of the British mammalia since the last Ice Age: I'll quite happily leave that task to those more fitted for it, like Derek Yalden.However, one or two things you say I do agree with. Ferrets whatever the current fashion for splitting domestics are just Polecats and don't rate an extra tick.The only Reindeer are an owned, managed domestic business enterprise and have no hope of qualifying.  Odd escapes wandering across the high plateau are not established.Sheep, similarly (and cows) are owned, managed domestics.Feral goats are not.  They are managed (culled) occasionally but so are Red Deer, that won't do as a reason to exclude them.  The populations have been feral for over 150 years.  They'll do for me.  Also they are tough-looking, mad-eyed woolly beasts that just look right.  So much for science.So far as I know Greater White-toothed Shrew is only pre-1500 on the Channel Isles, which are not part of the UK, Great Britain or the British Isles, so unless you want to include the post-1500 population in Eire they would be out by your rules (but in by ours).Extinct animals we don't really need to worry about (I suppose there may be some wrinklies left with St Kilda House Mouse, but its only a sub-species: there are certainly people around with Coypu, and any species that had to be positively eradicated was clearly self-sustaining).  Those made extinct by human agency in recent times will have to await reintroduction, no point cluttering up a working list with absent species: I have more hope than I did twenty years ago, when I couldn't envisage either Wild Boar or European Beaver returning to our landscape.I'd like to know what the evidence for Harvest Mouse and Red Squirrel being introduced is: I can see the former as a self-introducer like Black and Brown Rats, LW-t Shrew, Common Vole etc., in which case it would fall into their category.  For now I would prefer to leave them in Cat A.I don't have any evidence that Siberian Chipmunk is other than an escape - yet.  However, just as I have ticked a number of Yank spadgers that I suspect might have hitched (given that some of them were in dock areas!) I am prepared to call a Sibe Chippy a Cat C vagrant if it wanders through Immigration in Kent.I suspect by your strict rules Mountain Hares in England would be untickable, as they were introduced by the dreadful Victorians.BTW, Edible Dormice have now spread as far as Essex.  I wonder when the last formal survey of their range was carried out - I could see them marching SW a lot easier than E, and look how far they've got in the latter direction!  Anyway, there are lots of them where you do find them, and they seem to have no trouble with the climate, so they're in for me.Thank you for the additional gen on Pond Bat.  For my next trick, how to see one....The vagrant American bats you mention are perfectly countable except that all the recent ones were taken into care on discovery, and can't be ticked in captivity (only on release).  Don't start me off about people confining vagrant bats.....I declare the debate now open!John</blockquote>

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