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<\/p>\nRetirement, for many people, is an opportunity for a quieter life: time at the allotment, perhaps, or a luxury cruise on far-off seas.<\/p>\n
Adrian Potter is not one of those people. Looking for a change at the age of 53, after a career as a primary school teacher in West Yorkshire, this was an opportunity to \u201cgo feral\u201d.<\/p>\n
He certainly achieved that, becoming the point of contact throughout Huddersfield and the wider Kirklees area to help any large mammal in distress: first badgers, then foxes, then deer. <\/p>\n
Joining the local badger group, Potter was soon put in charge of the area\u2019s \u201cbadger phone\u201d \u2014 it happened to be his first mobile phone \u2014 which was called by the police, the council and local vets whenever a badger or other large mammal was hit by a car or got stuck somewhere it shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n
\u201cI needed to be defined by something different and exciting,\u201d Potter, now 65, wrote in his memoir Interrupted Journeys, published last week, which tells the story of his unconventional retirement. \u201cTo say I was a retired teacher, to myself or anyone else, was never going to be enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armed with his savings and pension, and with no dependants, he spent \u00a370,000 buying a three-acre patch of land containing a meadow, an area of planted trees and a deep clough \u2014 a gorge or narrow ravine \u2014 with a brook running through the woods.<\/p>\n
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Potter\u2019s book<\/p>\n
RACHEL ADAMS FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES<\/p>\n
At this rewilding project, he has recorded 50 species of birds \u2014 barn owls, kestrels and sparrowhawks among them \u2014 and 14 mammals, including foxes and badgers, which have made the site their home.<\/p>\n
Occasionally he also uses the site to nurse stricken creatures back to health, housing them in an old shed before they are strong enough to be returned to the wild. More severely injured creatures are taken to a vet or an animal rescue centre to receive treatment, he said. Usually, however, they are immediately put down to bring an end to their suffering. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Beavers, voles and wiggly rivers: rewilding is coming to London<\/a><\/p>\n Even more often, being called out to a road collision, night or day, is a case of dealing with a carcass.<\/p>\n Reluctant to let these tragedies go to waste, he said, he decided to create the first robust dataset of the badgers killed on the roads of the Kirklees borough each year. \u201cI was determined to examine every badger casualty that came up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Potter rescuing a baby deer<\/p>\n COURTESY ADRIAN POTTER<\/p>\n That involved weighing the body (a male badger can weigh as much as 17kg), recording the animal\u2019s sex and location, then disposing of the remains. Before he set out on his grisly task, there were records of 20 badgers a year killed on the roads in Kirklees. He was soon recording an average of 150 a year. <\/p>\n Extrapolating his data, he estimates 75,000 badgers are killed on Britain\u2019s roads annually \u2014 50 per cent higher than the official prediction, which dates back to a 1995 study by the University of York.<\/p>\n He described the death toll as an \u201cindirect badger cull\u201d, adding: \u201cIt\u2019s huge, absolutely huge. People just don\u2019t realise it. Roadkill might sound like a joke, but it isn\u2019t \u2014 it is something profound.\u201d<\/p>\n Other nations \u2014 the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada \u2014 insist that whenever a new road is built, a tunnel or overpass is also created for the safe passage of wildlife. \u201cIn those countries wildlife is valued,\u201d he said. \u201cIn this country we have nonsense about the British being animal lovers. We aren\u2019t \u2014 we are pet lovers but we are actually afraid of wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n Potter said his motivation for penning the book, which he wrote in long-hand, as he does not own a computer, was to \u201copen people\u2019s eyes\u201d about the wildlife that lives all around us.<\/p>\n Remarkably, even as predators, badgers allow rabbits to live alongside them in the setts they have dug, going elsewhere to hunt rabbits away from their home patch. Badgers are rarely aggressive towards humans and are actually rather timid. The false impression that they are vicious creatures stems from the fact they are so elusive. \u201cThe only people who have had close encounters with badgers are the people that persecuted them and caused them to become aggressive,\u201d Potter said. Badger baiting remains a real problem, he added.<\/p>\n Brian May at an anti-badger cull event in London in 2016<\/p>\n DAN KITWOOD\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n Foxes, widely seen as vermin, are complex and fascinating creatures, he thinks. And deer, which are viewed as overly abundant, he calls \u201csensitive, otherworldly creatures \u2026 the most mysterious and wildest of our larger beasts\u201d.<\/p>\n He writes that these species, which he calls the \u201cBig Three\u201d, have managed \u201cto thrive, despite the worst we can do, by virtue of their deeply ingrained survival instincts\u201d. <\/p>\n These days Potter has given up the badger phone, passing the number on to other members of the local badger group. Many areas have volunteers who provide this service \u2014 although in some parts it is performed by the RSPCA or a local wildlife rescue centre. Potter now focuses on roe deer, which he said have been rather neglected in his area. \u201cI decided it was time to reinvent myself as the Deer Man,\u201d he writes. \u201cI had no official status in my new role; I was wholly independent and self-styled, and relied on authority figures knowing who I was from experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, the calls have continued to come in, usually when a deer has been hit by a car. \u201cIn between times, like a soldier starved of action, I may admit to being a little bored,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n Potter said he was too angry to mention in his book the government\u2019s badger cull<\/a>: in an attempt to control bovine tuberculosis, almost 10,800 badgers were exterminated in England last year alone. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t apply to our area, so I would be writing about it as an outsider, which I didn\u2019t want to do,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I also couldn\u2019t write about it with a cool head, frankly, because it\u2019s a national disgrace.\u201d <\/p>\n![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/8f456bff-957a-45c3-829a-dff809b657ac.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/1f4d1eaa-258e-464b-b968-52e0d997620a.jpg\")
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