A Pandemic Appreciation of Nature Or An Opportunity to Break Rules?

The Covid19 pandemic experience of UK people, has repeatedly been claimed to have heightened appreciation of the natural world. People maintain they have felt calmer, after being exposed to wild animals and plants. Access to gardens and parks have been seen as a very positive feature, helping people to cope. Wildlife charities, however, have carried out a survey that paints a different picture (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25/reports-of-wildlife-surged-in-england-and-wales-in-2020-survey). Wildlife crime is not, unfortunately, separately classified by the UK police (it comes under the heading of 'miscellaneous'). The survey by the Wildlife charities recorded, however, a surge in these crimes in 2020. Badger setts were bulldozed by builders and birds of prey killed near game bird locations. Some folk seem to have regarded the pandemic as an opportunity for illegally ridding themselves of 'problematic' wildlife. The police were presumably busy with other matters, such as ensuring lockdown regulations. There were, consequently, many fewer convictions for wildlife crimes. Aspects of the natural world could be destroyed with few or no penalties.