Posted on 09/20/2009 5:15:28 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Presumably following the maxim of "waste not, want not", utilising roadkill has become a trend. In the UK, top forager Fergus Drennan (www.wildmanwildfood.com) has taken to holding roadkill suppers.
In Australia one Les Hall published a handy guidebook to spotting deceased species on the road.
And in Canada designer Amy Nugent has taken things a step further, "harvesting" highway hits from bears and moose (what you might call megafauna) through to porcupines to fashion a celebrated jewellery range (www.roadquill.ca) that includes bracelets and tie slides.
I'm not completely blind to the ethical reasoning here.
The first rule of sustainability is that humanity should use abundance, and there is sadly an abundance of roadkill; at one famed US junction (Highway 27 at Lake Jackson near Tallahassee, Florida), a turtle has a 98.86% chance of being squished, while on our roads the People's Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) estimates that 1-2% of the national population of hedgehogs, around 15,000, is killed on roads each year.
Secondly, carrion appeals to those who hate waste and, as one prolific UK roadkill consumer puts it, out of 40 carcasses found here, 20 will be edible, which may seem like good odds for something that's free. Finally and sensationally, animal rights campaigners tend to give roadkill the green light, including Peta, which deems roadkill meat acceptable fodder, as it's meat that hasn't come courtesy of the "barbaric" meat industry.
But it's hardly a natural end. The sustainability argument is undermined by the fact that roadkill is interlinked with the automobile and road-building sectors (both known for their thumping environmental and carbon footprints). After all, cyclists don't take out much native wildlife.
According to a study by Royal Holloway and Bedford university, hedgehogs have the poorest road skills.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
MI is one of them that needs a law like that, to keep its people from starving right now.
Badger. We don't need no stinkin' badgers!
OMG and they are all meaner than snot...
Maybe deep fried in beer batter....
good one....
They'd fight you for the roadkill.
Your just badgering me...:O)
Sorry it was a perch. Coulda choked on all those bones.
Then it better be a pretty big perch! You must have been starving. LOL
Sea Sea Senorita (can’t spell in Spanish) :O(
Hell, if I had a racoon, I’d throw it at that badger...badger wins, racoon loses....I laugh..
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