Yesterday Caroline Spelman announced that she was ‘minded to allow a cull’ of badgers in two hotspot areas for bovine tb, most likely Devon and Gloucestershire. This will follow more consultation on the methods to be used (shooting of free running badgers), and whether or not they are considered to be humane. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like the cull will be monitored for it’s actual success (or perturbation effects), other than to watch whether tb rates overall rise or fall. It will therefore be impossible to distinguish between cattle control and testing measures and badger culling as a contribution to the control of the disease.
So then, a “pilot cull”. Where have we heard this before? Ah yes, Wales.
A pilot cull, to test whether it works, but with no way of actually determining whether it works. Awkward. Actually worse, a pilot cull, in which several thousand badgers will be culled inhumanely, in order to check whether it’s humane…
The pilot will use an untested methodology and groups of farmers (this idea was already discounted in the ISG) who are expected to pay the whole cost upfront, which using DEFRAs own figures is likely to cost them more than bovine tb itself. If I were a farmer, I’d be scratching my head on this one.
This morning, armed with all the information I’ve just given I went on the Local radio, with the express intention of arming the people of Lancashire with it too. Unfortunately it didn’t matter how much I know about the figures and facts, I fluffed it. Yes I was given to expect a more national theme of questioning, I was up late and during the night (as I have been every night for weeks) with a small, colicky baby and I was nervous. But the outcome was the same, apart from a rather jerky, jumbled response to the first question (I would have recovered, I was getting my second wind) I was asked a question that until now I hadn’t consciously addressed. The gist of it was;
What does this cull mean for Lancashire’s badgers? This is good news right? Badgers in Lancashire won’t be culled!
I was flustered. I muttered some gaff about us being part of the Badger Trust and needing to support all the other groups who are within it while my brain caught up with the question. Ok. Badgers in Lancashire are safe for now. But I’ve seen the latest figures and they don’t make for promising reading.
Until 2010 there were 10 or less herd breakdowns in Lancashire per year. We have never had a case of tb in a badger. In 2010 there were 21 new herd breakdowns. Small fry? Maybe so. But it’s a 100% increase in a year. And not one that can have been caused by badgers.
Badgers don’t respect county boundaries. Badgers just have territories. And even if they did, if we had badgers who never crossed the border into say, Derbyshire (85 total new herd breakdowns) tb is still coming to them. It’s coming to them in the literal sense and its coming to them in the figurative sense. If more cattle are catching tb in Lancashire, we will eventually have badgers with tb in Lancashire. If we have badgers with tb in Lancashire, and this pilot cull becomes the standard treatment for areas with tb then ‘our’ badgers have a problem.
Leaving all that aside, is there anyone in any county with a love of wildlife who’s love of wildlife only corresponds to the county they live in? Do the people of Lancashire only care about badgers in Lancashire? We had a conviction a year or so ago of a gentleman (wrong word I admit) from Lancashire, convicted of digging for badgers outside the county but arrested the moment he crossed the border into his home county. Is there anyone in their right mind who would say “Let him off, it’s not like it was in our county!”.
Lancashire Badger Group operates in Lancashire on a day to day basis monitoring and protecting setts and advising the public, but we are part of a much bigger picture. The Badger Trust, previously known as the National Federation of Badger Groups, is our voice, made up of committee members from badger groups from around the country. Their fight surely is our fight. The issues we face are the same (digging and persecution, bovine tb, RTAs or problems with badgers in gardens) no matter how each problem varies in importance from county to county.
Badgers in Lancashire may not get letters from cousins in Gloucester telling them they may not see them again, but the badgers of the UK are part of one population, not 92 different distinct populations. It seems to me that the question was an odd one. This cull matters to Lancashire not just because badgers in Lancashire may one day be in the same boat, it matters because the people of Lancashire care about badgers, even if they do have a brummie / (insert any local non-Lancashire) accent.
To sign a petition click here.
To find out more click here.
To donate to the Badger Trust click here.
Or write to your MP.
Thanks