Britain's loneliest sheep

This is incredibly sad.*

The story of a sheep at the foot of a cliff, on her own, for two years.

She bleats when people go past in boats. She is so lonely. There's enough food and water so she is surviving - though her fleece is overgrown and heavy. It must be horrible in summer. And would she survive the heavy winter storms, forecast to batter the west coast?

You might think, what can we do? You might feel tears coming. You might experience deep compassion.

A rescue would be dangerous and difficult. It would cost a fair amount of money. As this story was in all our national newspapers, I would not be surprised if a Just Giving campaign raised sufficient funds and some attractive and charismatic - and caring - person organises a sheep salvation attempt.

Great. But, well, maybe this is also an opportunity to say that, yes, this is heart-wrenching and rightly we feel compassion, but consider that in some ways she is a lucky sheep. Had she been male, she’d have been killed before she reached adulthood. Had she not been a good breeder, she would be dead too. Had she bred lambs, they would have been separated from her.

Also, she is luckier than the many wild creatures whose habitats are destroyed by sheep grazing so that we can have lamb, mutton and wool. Oh, and “traditional countryside pursuits” like herding sheep and raising and training and working sheep dogs.

It is awful that she is just left there. It is also awful that this, having been in the national media, is likely to raise money and cause a rescue for this individual sheep when the plight of many thousands, millions of individual slaughtered sheep and homeless, starving wild creatures lead to zero compassion or change.

We breed North Ronaldsay sheep that can flourish in these environments - they even eat seaweed - so that we can exploit every last scrap of land, however inhospitable. Had we not bred these sheep, had we not exploited these animals for hundreds of generations, she would not be there.

Her plight is part of a huge systemic failing and her rescue - which I hope happens - will make people feel compassionate and great and all saviour-like while still enabling the very systems that led to this sheep being on her own at the foot of a cliff.

The salvation-story would feel good, but it is a cheap palliative for all the harm we do to sheep and through sheep.

* Since I wrote this and before posting it, "Fiona" has been rescued. Amazing what a bit of publicity can do. Still, a good news story!