TV Star: Elephants should be culled

Elephants and deer should be culled to stop over-population according to BBC wildlife presenter Chris Packham, and there should be curfews for cats too.

Fearing a lack of natural predators for deer in the UK and elephants in Africa, the outspoken animal expert believes mass-execution is the only answer.

“We have to play a proactive role and that means killing things,” he told Radio Times. “People come to shoot near where I live and they ask me where the deer are and I tell them ‘the deer are over there – go and blast’.”

Deer population in the UK continues to boom and culls are already in action to reduce the damage they do to the country’s woodlands.

The presenter of popular show ‘Autumnwatch’, which features an abundance of cute critters in their natural British habitat, also worries about there being too many people in the world, but believes people shy away from talking about such issues out of fear of talking about the Holocaust.  

“We face horrendous hurdles in getting this message [about limiting population growth] across. The first thing is the Holocaust, because the minute you talk about this, people call you a eugenicist and they believe that you want to kill people,” he said.

“It’s such nonsense. It’s not that there are too many whites, blacks, yellows, Muslims, Christians or anything. It’s organisms – too many human organisms.”

On a slightly lighter but no less bizarre note he also believes the nation’s cats should be kept from going out at night in a bid to halt the killing of wildlife.

Packham said: “Over 200 million animals are killed each year by domestic cats. If you keep them in at night it reduces that figure by 50%. I love cats, I think they are beautiful, a wonderful predator.”

While culling one animal because of a lack of predators and then calling for another predator to be stopped from doing what it does best may seem hypocritical it’s actually…

No wait, it’s just hypocritical.

This isn’t the first time Packham has caused controversy. In 2009 he stated his belief that Pandas should be allowed to die out.

He said the animals, which are the symbol of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, have “gone down an evolutionary cul-de-sac. It's not a strong species. I reckon we should pull the plug. Let them go, with a degree of dignity.”

‘Autumnwatch’ returns with new presenter Michaela Strachan on Friday October 7th at 8:30pm, BBC2