In the early 1960’s in Wiltshire a phenomenon of nature occurred - on a chalky stream the mute swan population rocketed to over 60 in a small district due to a change in farm practises. The dig for victory campaign in the last war had created better food source for a protected species that could eat anything at will and nothing could be done about it.
In Shropshire a similar phenomenon has occurred - the growing of maize, introduced 30 years ago has sky rocketed. Maize, the junk food of the countryside, lacks all the major trace elements and as the field are left open all winter after harvesting the soil is leached of all its elements leading to impoverished land but one thing has thrived, the badger is addicted to maize cobs.
Even thought Treflach grows no maize the effects of an overpopulated protected species has been to decimate the rest of the food chain. Badgers can travel for miles to balance their poor diet with meat in the form of all small mammals and ground nesting birds. The sight of the Treflach March hare is no more. A hare unlike a rabbit has no burrow, it gives birth to its leverets on the surface in hollows in grassland, a day old leveret is no match for a hoover of badges so the hare has died out, extinct from a perfect landscape due to over predation.