Encouraging wildlife or harbouring pests

[dancecaller]

The fieldmice question stirred a thought. People say you should leave space for wild life in the garden, but when you do you get

rabbits eating your plants

moles digging up the lawn

rats and mice that get into the garage and eat the stored fruit

and my strawberry nets have holes in them from untangling the blackbirds

[noxlumos]

Yeah it's very true you do get all of that, we have over an acre of gardens and currently have moles all over the place, so our lawns look like mini-alpine ranges, but I don't really care, I'd prefer the inconvenience to the alternative which is to do away with them ( and the rabbits in my veg garden).

I would just find it an uncomfortable arrogance on my part to kill something for behaving naturally if my life wasn't in danger or I wasn't going to eat it ( foxes in the hen houses being a notable exception).

It would be nice if my lawn was like a bowling green, but I'll live with the molehills because in my humble opinion it's the morally right thing to do.You only borrow land until you die ( even if we do make ourselves feel more immortal with all of this "I own" rubbish) so we should do as little damage whilst we borrow it as possible to all things, plus isn't it more lovely to watch badgers, herons, squirrels, birds of all sorts than just to have an immaculate sterile garden? I think so.

[WendyS]

Yes, it's a real dilemma if you're both a keen gardener and wildlife lover, and over the years I've tried to adopt a modus vivendi of "do no harm", except where my vegetable crops are in danger of being totally destroyed. I will live will caterpillar nibbled cabbages if I have to. We visited a small wildlife centre over the week-end where one of the exhibits was a pair of harvest mice in their own little man-made contained environment. They were so tiny, (less than half a thumb length) that we would probably never have had the privilege of seeing them in the wild, and I have to say that they were like special little jewels. If I had to choose between saving their habitat and a nice tidy garden, I would choose the former. We humans have such an arrogant power to destroy the environment of lesser creatures that I think we have a duty to exercise that power responsibly.

[dancecaller]

I agree really, just that you don't always get what you expect.

Not that I'm sorry that, now we've got a cat, we're not so over-run with rabbits.