April Fool?
Canals being damaged
Last weekend the newspapers were full of a story, obviously inspired by a CaRT Press release, about how our canals and rivers were being damaged by the practice of feeding bread to ducks.
According to the story, this was bad for both the waterways and the ducks, since the former were suffering environmental damage from the bread, the fish and the water quality being mentioned, while the latter were becoming over reliant on a food that was not natural to them and might suffer through getting out of the habit of eating their proper food. Instead of bread people were encouraged to feed ducks vegetable peelings and frozen peas.
Not a shred of evidence
This farrago was not backed up by a shred of scientific or any other sort of evidence. Personally, I have not noticed a significant increase in the number of dead ducks seen in the last 40 odd years, nor have I noticed any decrease in the number of ducks around on the canals, not to mention moorhens, coots and swans, all of whom are enthusiastic bread eaters. The one bird that has increased in number are the Canada geese, noisy and messy things that they are—if they are damaged by eating bread then I will start feeding them. Mind you, I have been hoping that they might be dealt with as an 'invasive species', like Himalayan Balsam.
In my experience, ducks and other wildlife are perfectly capable of making their own decisions as to what is good for them—they always reject our potato peelings for example—and do not need the CaRT diet police to dictate their preferences. I did once see a mallard catch a sparrow on the wing, hold it under water until it stopped struggling and then eat it, so maybe they are not the innocent vegetarians that CaRT implies.
Daft campaign
This Save our Ducks scheme was apparently initiated by a CaRT employee who rejoices in the title of National Environment Manager; it seems to me that this daft campaign has been dreamt up to justify his existence; perhaps CaRT could be saving a salary or two here?