ABSTRACT

This chapter will examine the protection of wild animals and birds, and also the protection of their habitat. Wildlife in the UK faces many pressures: not only from deliberate acts of cruelty, baiting and hunting, but also from developments such as roads and airports, habitat loss and the problem of pollution. Wild animals have for centuries been open to direct and indirect destruction; unless they were scarce or were protected as game, or became captive (when they were then protected, under the Wild Animals in Captivity Protection Act 1900, later to be incorporated into the Protection of Animals Act 1911) or the property of humans, wild animals had no protection under the law.