Move the bats eliminate the rats

By Matt Ridley

On the day last week that the House of Commons was debating a private member’s bill dealing with bats in churches, conservationists were starting to eliminate rats from the island of South Georgia by dropping poisoned bait from helicopters. Two very different facets of wildlife conservation: the bats stand for preservation of pristine nature from human interference; the rats for active intervention to manage nature in the interests of other wildlife. Which is better value for money?......While one arm of government, English Heritage, enforces EU directives to preserve cultural heritage, another, Natural England, enforces a directive that churches may not disturb bat roosts. Both demand the spending of money, which is thus circular. Church wardens complain of officious bullying by amateur and self-trained busybodies from the Bat Conservation Trust, to whom the task of enforcing the bat rules has been delegated by government.

 Relishing their role, these amateur bat policemen demanded that work was stopped in one church because of a single dropping, which was probably from a mouse……Most bat species are not rare or declining, but it makes no difference. …… Of the 190 species of mammal and bird that are known to have become extinct in the past 500 years, all but nine were found exclusively on islands (if you count Australia as an island) and most of the extinctions were caused by the introduction to islands by people of goats, cats, rats, snakes, sparrows and all sorts of pests and parasites…….To Read More…