The GUARDIAN reports that Britain’s carnivores must survive government culls, gamekeepers, poisoning, persecution and increasingly busy roads but, in modern times at least,  they have never had it so good: badger, otter, pine marten, polecat, stoat and weasel populations have “markedly improved” since the 1960s, according to a new study. The otter, polecat and pine marten have bounced back from the brink of extinction, and the country’s only carnivorous mammal now in danger of being wiped out is the wildcat, with the dwindling Scottish populations hit by hybridisation with domestic and feral cats.