Wildlife Welfare and Care in the UK is a Disgrace

 I am so utterly 😠 off by wildlife rescues and wildlife vets.

We had a badger fall into a sunken garden last Thursday but it was not reported until Tuesday. It was dehydrated and needed some feeding but first response and wildlife vets stated no injuries.  This was not a young badger by any means.

Anyway, the reason I am so trying so hard  not to swear, today I was told that the badger was put down as it was found to be blind. Initially it was thought temporary blindness due to dehydration but no.

Were any wildlife parks, etc, contacted to see whether they would take the badger? No. "A blind badger is like a three legged fox and CANNOT survive in the wild so it has to be killed". Let me quote you exactly what I would have told the wildlife vet as well as anyone else -in fact, not me: I  will quote other sources:

"...badgers do not rely heavily on their eyesight. They are primarily nocturnal animals with small eyes and their vision is not very acute. Instead, they rely more on their strong sense of smell and hearing to navigate their environment, find food, and detect potential threats. "

Wildlife Online https://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/animals/article/european-badger-senses

"“Naturalists universally agree that badgers have an acute sense of smell, pretty good hearing and rather poor vision. However, this view is based almost entirely on anecdotal evidence: very few experiments have been conducted to investigate the nature and limits of the badger’s sensory world, and hardly anything has been written about the structure of the sense organs themselves or about the parts of the brain that serve a sensory function.”

Binfield Badger Group https://www.binfieldbadgers.org.uk/copy-of-badger-ecology

"Eyesight

Badgers do not rely heavily on their eyesight and their eyes are small, in common with other burrowing animals.    It is pitch dark underground where even the best pair eyes will be useless.  Their eyes do, however, have a reflective layer to enhance their night-time vision when above ground.   Their night sight is better than ours but to enable this they have given up the ability to see colours as we do." 

In fact, I can quote another 20 sources on the subject. Vets and wildlife rescues do not study the subject of badgers (or foxes) or carry out any field study. They refer to or were taught based on out of date books by people who were taught the same thing because their "job" is not studying the animals involved.

The UK is quite literally retarded when it comes to vets or wildlife rescues/wildlife vets and actual wildlife.  It was asked that the badger involved in this incident not be taken to one known as the "Put To Sleep Centre" and it was thought it would get the best treatment at another wildlife hospital. We were wrong. 

If a blind badger survived in the wild and was only found to be blind because stupid humans do not think that dangerous drops into gardens need to have barriers there is no reason why it should not have lived on.

PTS. Hands washed of the "problem".

This now means that there is no wildlife hospital/rescue in the UK that gets a rating from me above 1.

The UK is a ****** disgrace when it comes to wildlife and the welfare and treatment is just as bad.  Will that statement make me enemies? Yes. Do I care? ABSOLUTELY NOT. The animal involved is far more important than any offended human ego