THERE is no shortage of folk happy to have a crack at Kirklees Council’s current proposed service cuts.

Uncannily, this time the cuts seem focused on the young, people with learning difficulties and pensioners – in effect, a swipe at those least able to defend themselves.

You see this in an untended schoolyard. The Big Bully (think ConDem government) slaps the Little Bully (think Kirklees) who, scared to slap back, slaps at somebody even weaker, gets its ear pulled by the teacher and squeals ‘The Big Bully told me to do it’.

This is life. It’s always the defenceless and vulnerable that cop it first.

But who cops it last? The animals.

Justin Kerswell, campaigns manager at Viva! – a vegetarian conservation group that sticks up for animals – has an axe to grind for those at the very bottom of the pecking order.

I think I might have used a couple of unfortunate idioms here.

‘Axe to grind’ and ‘pecking order’ conjure for me at least an unpleasant scene in a hen-run.

That aside, Justin warns us that another badger cull is on the way.

Once again, badgers are being blamed for spreading bovine tuberculosis (bTB) among cattle.

A decision on killing thousands of badgers – a protected species – is expected in the next few weeks in a bid to control the disease.

It will be ineffectual, says Viva!, which claims the incidence of bTB is falling in England and Wales. The Government says it’s rising.

“Farmers seem hell bent on shooting badgers,” says Justin. “The British countryside could fast become a graveyard for wild animals if the Government gets its way.

“The question has to be why we as a nation are persecuting our natural heritage rather than cherishing and protecting it.

“Badgers – and other wild animals – are set to be the scapegoats for land mismanagement and intensified meat and dairy farming practices.

“In almost every instance it is Man that has caused the problem and wildlife that pays the price.

“Ten years of research found that culling badgers would have no meaningful impact on the spread of the disease. Yet the politicians – blinded by a farming lobby that can’t see the wood for the trees – refuse to listen.”

As if badgers didn’t have enough troubles. Badger-baiting has never been more popular.

It’s not just badgers, is it? Dark whispers about a cull of grey squirrels, wild boar and urban foxes persist.

Our lovely Prime Minister David Cameron is ‘furious’ about the ban on fox hunting and would be happy if it returned.

If the urban foxes are the problem, are we to see Hooray Henrys and their dogs crashing through rows of terrace house gardens, hooves splintering the decking and upsetting the water features?

If we let the Local Development Frameworks fill in all the green fields between rural communities it’s hasta la vista to the animals that use them as safe corridors – hedgehogs, squirrels, foxes, badgers, stoats, weasels, frogs, toads, newts ... the list, sadly, is not endless.

For Wind in the Willows read the Song of Concrete. For Watership Down read Affordable Housing Up.

We haven’t suddenly decided to wage war on our wildlife. This has been going on for a long time.

Many decades ago some klutz thought it was a good idea to grub out our hedgerows. This took away birds’ habitat, the very birds that used to eat insect pests.

We banished those wonderful swirling flocks of starlings from our city centres and would love to do the same to feral pigeons.

We hate moles because they mess with our lawns. We despise grey squirrels because they are bark-strippers and spoil our forestry profits.

It’s tradition to gas rabbits or give them myxomatosis and to chase hares and deer with dogs.

We have always hated mice and rats, admittedly for good reason, and we seem to hate bats because they are ‘scary’.

A bat can eat 3,000 midges a night. This makes the bat my friend.

Hedgehogs demolish slug populations but we splat them on our roads by the thousand as if they were unwilling participants in an arcade game.

Given the huge problems we have with the economy, it’s tempting to push British wildlife down the list of Important Things To Save.

But care for and stewardship of the natural world is a mark of humanity. We have a precious jewel of an island and we are standing by while mad folk destroy it.