WIlderness -land inhabited by deer
The olld meaning of wilderness has nothing to do with the landscape, it is in fact old English for 'land inhabited by deer'. Even so, we are a medical society, why should we be talking about wildlife? after all in day to day student life wildlife has very little impact on us. Too often we, like the rest of the country like to depict the wilderness like this photo, empty. The truth is we are surrounded by birds, animals and insects, and even experienced outdoorsy people do not appreciate the amazing creatures that surround them or know what to do when they encounter them. Nowadays most people with an interest in wildlife fall in to camps, the type that like springwatch, those mad twitchers,angry farmers and militant tree huggers. Lets face it british wilidlife is just an unfashionable subject and when comparing it to elephants and giraffes in the sahara and it's just a bit boring.
But the thing is, wildlife shape our landscape, controls the development of our environment and our society. Even with modern cultivation techniques without the humble bee 3/4 of the world's crops would not be pollinated. More than this, once you have had the priviledge to come into close contact with wildlife you begin to see just how fantastic even the humblest creatures are. Take a closer look at a swift, perhaps dull from a distance, and you will see a bizarre gaping mouth, a tongue without taste buds and a tiny body that so astoudingly light yet tougher than your average SAS wannabe. What I love most about these animals is that they are not like dogs and cats that are fluffy, sweet and need human attention. Wild animals are highly adapted, tough and tenacious they don't want or need mollycoddling. They can either be saved or put down, there is no place for the wild in a cage. Why do we bother rescuing wildlife you might ask. Is it not up to nature? Humans should not interfere this is true, I would not go around trying to save birds being hunted by a sparrowhak . But humans have warped our environment to the extent that wildlife have no place to go, we need crops and fields, we need roads and cars these things cannot be avoided, the least we can do is help to correct at least some of the inbalance and as much as suffering is a part of nature if it can be avoided it should be.
I am no expert in animals but I have been extremely lucky to have been brought up surrounded by wildlife. Indeed the skills required in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation are not far off those needed My aunt and cousins run a wildlife hospital and my parents have similarly had a knack of attracting injured beasties. The wildlife hospital is run our ot the house (my family is slightly mad) and my best memories of childhood are handrearing hares and trying to catch jackdaws that won't get off the doorframe. The more animals get involved the madder humans appear. The lack of general knowledge from vets and the public is astounding, one gentleman tried to send a sparrow through the post another lady accused us of being heartless for failing to re-animate a hedgehog so obviously dead that it was in full rigor and could be propped upright on its hind legs. My aunt only recently gave a talk on how to recognise foxes to vetinary nurses! Contact with animals seems to bring out the worst in some but also the best in other, I remember listening to my aunt coach a soldier on how to care for a fallen nest of chicks while he was exercise in Hereford. He was finding food out of his ration pack and keeping them in his helmet with grenades going off in the background. And as little as you might think wildlife effects you, you have a huge effect on it, whether that be through driving a car or walking through a woodland.
So in the coming weeks I will be adding to the blog and 'Outside the box' page with information about treating wildlife related injury as well as wildlife rescue.
