Time to stop playing the badger blame game
TIME TO STOP PLAYING THE BADGER BLAME GAME
DOMINIC DYER, BORN FREE’S BRITISH WILDLIFE ADVOCATE, EXPLAINS WHY THE BADGER CULL IS AT THE VERY CENTRE OF THE DEBATE ON HOW THE UK GOVERNMENT CONSIDERS WILDLIFE PROTECTION
The last day before a Parliamentary recess and a Bank Holiday weekend are usually put to good use by the government when it comes to burying bad news. This was most definitely the case when it came to the announcement by Defra Farming Minister George Eustice on 24th May that badger culling will be extended to low risk TB areas in England, a decision that paves the way for the most significant destruction of a protected indigenous species in living memory.
To date, more than 35,000 badgers have been shot across 21 licensed zones in the West and South West of England under the government’s culling policy, at an estimated cost to the tax payer of £50 million (or around £1,400 per badger).
Around half of these badgers have been killed using so-called “controlled shooting” (where free-roaming badgers are attracted to target with food, then shot at by marksmen using rifles), a method that is considered inhumane by the government’s independent expert panel and the British Veterinary Association as it can result in badgers taking over five minutes to suffer a long painful death as a result of bullet wounds, blood loss and organ failure.
Despite repeated attempts to paint the badger as a major source of bovine TB for cattle, the government has provided no credible or reliable evidence that badger culling is making any significant contribution to lowering bovine TB in or around the cull zones.
With 10 new cull licenses waiting for approval, supplementary culling taking place on an increasing scale and now culling being allowed in the low risk TB areas, the number of badgers that might be killed over the next three years could exceed 100,000 at a huge cost to the tax payer. As a result, badgers could disappear altogether from areas of the country where they have lived since the last ice age.
What the government originally promoted as a cost effective farmer-led policy, has now become one of the most expensive publicly-funded wildlife destruction policies in history, with bills stacking up for equipment, training, monitoring, policing and legal challenges to the policy.
To make matters worse, the vast majority of badgers killed to date have not been tested for TB. Over 900 badgers were taken for testing by Defra from across the cull zones in 2016 and when the test results were finally released in December 2017, we learned that only around 3% were suffering with late stage TB which might have made them a risk to other badgers and possibly cattle. The overwhelming majority of the badgers being killed are perfectly healthy and present no risk to anyone or anything.
As the costs of the carnage has risen sharply, the cost of vaccinating badgers against TB has continued to fall, to the point where organisations such as the Wildlife Trust and Badger Trust can cage trap and vaccinate a badger against TB for around £200, while the tax payer is having to pay around £1,400 to have a badger cage trapped and killed with a shot gun.
Since the badger culls started in 2013, the government, with the support of the farming and livestock industry and veterinary industry, have run a highly effective propaganda campaign aimed at demonising the badger. Politicians, the media and the wider public have been bombarded with a continuous stream of false allegations, cherry-picked scientific data and anecdotal evidence dressed up as scientific fact, in an increasingly desperate attempt to justify the killing.
However, under growing political and public pressure, the Environment Secretary Michael Gove has now set up a TB Policy Review chaired by the Professor of Zoology at Jesus College Oxford, Sir Charles Godfray.
Born Free joined a recent meeting with Sir Charles on 17th May to discuss key aspects of the TB review process. At that meeting, we made it clear to Sir Charles that the government’s current policy is failing to achieve its aim of eradicating bovine TB from cattle and will continue to do so while the focus remains on badgers as a principal source of bovine TB, and while DEFRA continues to shy away from introducing changes to the way the cattle industry operates that will bring the infection under control.
Along with the Badger Trust, the RSPCA and other key wildlife protection organisations, Born Free is pressing the government to move the focus from badgers to cattle as the main source of the problem.
Whilst the government has been wasting tens of millions of public funds slaughtering mostly healthy badgers, it has failed to put in place the more effective TB testing systems, cattle movement and biosecurity controls that would help to bring bovine TB under control.
This negligence is not just devastating badger populations, but is also letting down farmers and tax payers.
Over the coming months the battle for badgers will return to the High Court, at which Gove will be forced to defend the failure of his department to adequately assess the wider ecological impacts of badger culling, and the justification for approving supplementary culling licences which are being issued to enable the killing to continue beyond the completion of the initial four year licenses in cull zones. His decision to licence culling in the low risk TB areas (covering most of Eastern and Northern England) is also likely to result in a further High Court legal challenge before the end of the year.
A further debate in Parliament on the badger cull is being scheduled for late July and the anti-badger cull campaign will be taking to the streets of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Maidenhead constituency on Saturday 14th July, and Exeter on Saturday 18th August.
The battle to protect the badger is far more than just a fight to defend a shy nocturnal animal most of us never see. The badger culling policy is at the very centre of the debate about how our government and wider society considers issues concerning the protection of our native wildlife.