Jason Endfield

Writer, blogger, wildlife campaigner.
Fiercely independent, not associated with, or beholden to, any political group or conservation organisation.
Views my own.

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

@mattwridley I did read your post Matt - and I respectfully disagree with your conclusions. There's doubtless a discussion to be had around the widespread decline in wildlife - but I think we all know that the depletion of nature in this country is nearly always due to the actions of humans.

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

@freckles681 @mattwridley There's been a steep decline in hedgehog populations in Scotland too, primarily driven by loss of habitat, removal of hedgerows and use of pesticides. Many are killed on the roads, and also by strimmers and bonfires. All human causes. Most certainly not due to badgers....

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

Nonsense.
To suggest that badgers have 'mainly caused' a 97% decline in hedgehogs is a ridiculous assertion. Clearly and obviously the primary reason for their decline is human-driven destruction of habitat.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

The decline of the hedgehog is mainly caused by the huge recent expansion of the badger population. In both time and place there is a strong negative correlation between badger numbers and hedgehog numbers.

The scientific evidence that an increase in Mr Brock may well be the chief cause of Mrs Tiggywinkle’s demise is overwhelming.

There’s the direct evidence – the hollowed-out prickle-bearing skins left behind after a badger eats a hedgehog. Only badgers can open a hedgehog after it rolls up in defence with prickles on the outside. Foxes and dogs cannot. Badger predation is often found to be the main cause of hedgehog death in studies in this country.

There’s the timing evidence. The decline in hedgehogs coincided with the rise in badgers since the latter’s protection began in the 1970s and was strengthened in the 1990s. Anecdotally, there are clear-cut cases to show this is likely to be cause and effect, not coincidence. Kew Gardens had a thriving hedgehog population until the mid 1980s when badgers first arrived there. Today, says the Royal Botanic Gardens’ website, “Kew is teeming with badgers”. There are now more than 20 badger setts and hedgehogs are hardly ever seen, and if they are don’t last long. Habitat change and development cannot be the cause in Kew, because there has not been any.

There’s the spatial evidence. Throughout England hedgehogs (great worm eaters) have vanished from worm-rich pastureland, where badgers thrive, and cling on only in suburban gardens and amenity grassland, where badgers so far have not penetrated much. Even here, as one study put it: “the probability of hedgehog occurrence in suburban habitats declined towards zero in areas of high badger density.” As a general rule, wherever badgers are present at a density higher than about one main sett every four square kilometres, hedgehogs are absent. In most of rural England, sett density is two or three times higher.

There’s the behavioural evidence. Back in the 1990s, ecologists discovered that the smell of badgers alone is enough to deter hedgehogs from entering an area. And hedgehogs released into areas of excellent habitat high-tailed it out of there if they smelt badger. They do not wait to be eaten.

There’s the international evidence. Sweden has also blamed its decline in hedgehogs on rising badger numbers. In the Netherlands, scientists reported this yearthat hedgehogs are now confined mostly to urban areas, despite roads and development, because of the spread of badgers in rural areas.

There’s the experimental evidence, which is the clincher. The randomized badger control trials, carried out between 1998 and 2006 in 30 different parts of the country, provided an opportunity to see what happened to hedgehog numbers if badger numbers were reduced.

In pasture land, where hedgehogs are mostly extinct, there was of course little effect. But in “amenity grassland” – parks, lawns, gardens, playing fields etc – there was a dramatic explosion in hedgehog numbers in those areas where badgers were culled: hedgehog density almost trebledfrom an average of 0.9 per hectare to 2.4 per hectare in just five years. By contrast in the control areas where no badgers were culled, the hedgehog density remained unchanged at 0.3 per hectare over the same period. 
So we know one way to increase hedgehog numbers: reduce badger numbers. No other approach has been demonstrated to have such an effect. Given that badgers are highly effective predators of bumble bees (those who try to study bumble bees complain that most of the nests they find get dug out and eaten by badgers) as well as of ground nesting birds, and that they carry bovine tuberculosis, there is little doubt that lower badger densities would be good for the ecology of the British countryside as well as for farming.

There is nothing natural about the density at which badgers and foxes live in Britain today.

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

Don't let the badger cull come to Wales!
One of the country's best loved wild animals is under threat - please sign the petition to stop any Welsh badger cull.
Thank you.
Petition: We call upon the Senedd to reject any badger cull in Wales. https://t.co/6kuFw2wiaE

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

Disco legend Gloria Gaynor is returning to Israel for a concert in April 2027! 🇮🇱🪩

We will survive. We will thrive. And we will dance again! 💙🎶

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

Once we were educated to respect the natural world.
We found joy and magic in the discovery of nature.
Now we watch in despair at its desecration.

"Wild bird populations are collapsing because a system built on greed doesn't value the ecosystems that sustain life" @CHinchliffMP

[Chris Hinchliff MP @CHinchliffMP]

When "growth" is measured only by GDP we all lose out.

Wild birds are disappearing because a system built on greed doesn't value ecosystems that sustain life.

Birdsong falls silent. BlackRock profits.

We should measure progress by what actually makes our lives better.

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

Oak in silhouette, as the sun sets on a Welsh hillside. 12/10/2026.

[David Collier @mishtal]

Will all the @uklabour party politicians just SHUT UP about 'solidarity' with Jews today.

We know you do not really care. You just have to somehow get through October 7 before going back to waving the Palestinian flag and demonising Israel.

We see you. We know what you are.

[Amjad Taha أمجد طه @amjadt25]

A Letter to the World’s Leftists and to Righteous People : 7th of October. There are days history writes in ink, days it writes in tears, and days so terrible that history writes their names in blood. October 7 was such a day. The morning came quietly. Some were sleeping. Some were praying. Mothers were beside their children. Then Hamas terrorists, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, entered homes in Israel. Blood. Fire. Screams. Women were raped. Children were burned. Families were executed. Babies were kidnapped. Jews were hunted and murdered.

Homes that once held prayers, laughter and children's footsteps became places of death. Beds became graves. A mother's arms became empty. A child's room waited for a child who would not return.

There are no words large enough for such grief. Only the silence afterward. The silence of a mother waiting for her child. The silence left when evil has finished screaming.

Once again, Jews were murdered for being Jews. An ancient nightmare suddenly had a date in the present tense. The old hatred had found new mouths and new excuses.

From my country, the United Arab Emirates, a Muslim Arab country, came a voice within minutes calling it by its name: A terrorist attack. No excuse. No ideology can make rape resistance. No slogan can make burning a child justice. No flag can make kidnapping a baby freedom.

And yet, London. Paris. Toronto. You would have expected tears. Instead, people celebrated while Jewish families searched for the missing and children remained with kidnappers. People waved the flag of the kidnappers of babies instead of demanding freedom for the babies.

This was another wound of October 7. Innocent people were murdered, while others had forgotten how to mourn them. It felt as though civilisation had turned backwards. Back toward 1936. Back toward the old darkness. That was where morals failed.

I have travelled to universities around the world and stood beside Jewish communities attacked simply for being Jewish, to tell them: You have a friend here.

When the Holocaust happened, I was not there. I cannot go backwards and stop the trains or take one terrified child by the hand. But I was alive on October 7. And I had a choice.

One day my children may ask: Where did you stand? I want to tell them: I stood with the baby, not his kidnapper. I stood with the mother, not her rapist. I stood with the murdered, not the murderer. I stood with the Jew hunted simply for being a Jew.

When people found sophisticated words to excuse barbarism, I chose humanity's simplest word: No. No to rape. No to kidnapping. No to burning children. No to terrorism. No to antisemitism.

Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, may have lost in Gaza, but an ideology does not die because it loses a battlefield. Look at the streets of the West, universities, some parliaments and city councils. Too many young minds have become hostages to propaganda for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran's proxies in the West.

When you become silent about an October 7, you do not guarantee that October 7 will remain in the past.

Hatred begins as a sentence before it becomes a scream. Extremism begins as an excuse before it becomes an act. Evil first asks to be tolerated, then excused, then normalised.

Remember October 7. Remember the empty beds. Remember the empty arms. Remember the kidnapped. Remember the murdered. Remember Jewish families hunted in the one place every human should believe is safe: home.

Be like my country, the UAE, where antisemitism is not an opinion to celebrate. It is a crime. Where the Muslim Brotherhood is banned, not romanticised as activists.

History will ask something simple: When a child cried, where did you stand?

On October 7, I knew my answer. With the baby, not the kidnapper. With the mother, not her rapist. With the innocent, not the terrorist.

And when my children read this chapter of history, I want them to know: Their father did not look away.

[H.E.T. @HolocaustUK]

Today marks three years since October 7th 2023 - the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

On that day, Hamas terrorists unleashed a wave of barbaric violence, murdering more than 1,200 innocent men, women and children, and taking 251 people hostage.

We remember all those murdered.

May their memory be a blessing.

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

🕯️October 7
#UNFORGO7TEN
#IStandWithIsrael
#RememberOctober7
#IAmaZionist
Am Yisrael Chai 🇮🇱
🇮🇱 עם ישראל חי

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

3 Years On. October 7.
We will remember.
#UNFORGO7TEN
#IStandWithIsrael
#RememberOctober7
#IAmaZionist
Am Yisrael Chai. 🇮🇱
עם ישראל חי

[Israel ישראל @Israel]

Three years later, October 7, 2023 is still with us.

Every name. Every empty chair. Every life stolen by Hamas.

We remember. Always.

Am Yisrael Chai. 🇮🇱

#UNFORGO7TEN

[David Collier @mishtal]

The conflict in Gaza is not a genocide. Israel is not an apartheid state and obviously Zionism is not racism.

The only thing telling lies about Jews proves @TheGreenParty, is that you are a vile bunch of Jew haters.

Oh and btw - your leader - @ZackPolanski is a big coward.

[Israel Foreign Ministry @IsraelMFA]

Today, the Green Party in Britain ceased to act as a political party and became a body that gives legitimacy to terrorism. The Greens have adopted not only the green of Hamas, but also its ideology: the elimination of the State of Israel through armed struggle.

The shocking resolution adopted today legitimises armed struggle, calls for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” - meaning the destruction of the State of Israel - and labels as “racist” the aspiration of the Jewish people for self-determination.

This goes far beyond the boundaries of legitimate political debate. As long as this resolution remains in place, it will be a stain on the history of the United Kingdom.

Every political party in Britain, first and foremost the governing Labour Party, must unequivocally reject this twisted resolution.

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

The Green Party are a disgrace.
A shameful day for the UK.

[Shahrar Ali @ShahrarAli]

BREAKING: The far left has landed.
Green Party passes Zionism is Racism motion. 4 October 2026, Brighton.

For: 1022
Against: 813

The UK's first openly Antisemitic Party. Make no mistake this motion removes the right of the state of Israel to exist. It requires it.

I've never been more ashamed and horrified of what the party has become.

Lucas, Ramsay, Denyer, Chowns, Berry, Polanski either asleep at the wheel or trying to come off the ship they were steering. Way too little too late, they should own it.

[Lina Sara Szwarc @linalinera]

No hay fotos, videos ni datos sobre un genicidio en Gaza pero aseguran que sucedió. Hay fotos, videos y datos del genocidio del 7 de octubre pero lo niegan. Hay fotos y videos del intento de secuestro del avión pero dicen que es mentira. Así funciona el no cerebro neoantisemita.

[Jason Endfield @JasonEndfield]

Massive wind turbines will soon blight vast swathes of the Welsh coast - killing wildlife, destroying ecosystems and changing sacred seascapes forever.
It's an appalling desecration.

https://t.co/wCQ4GsyIcS

[Tim Birch @TimBirchWild]

Let me get this right. A Red Listed species, meaning there's serious conservation concerns about it, can now be legally shot as of October 1st ?!! Why wont you UK Environment Secretary @AngelaEagle and @LlyrGruffydd @WGRural protect our iconic #Woodcock @MaryCreagh @RSPBEngland