Our Badgers are dying

Despite the best efforts of Network For Animals, Team Badger, and thousands of motivated people around the UK, the 2014 badger cull finally began last night, Monday 8th September.

Over the next six weeks, up to 1876 innocent badgers will be shot by government employed marksmen, either trapped in cages that could have been used to vaccinate them, or fired upon from up to 70 metres away while meekly foraging for food.

Parliament voted in April by 219 to 1 that the culls should not continue. Public opinion is firmly against culling. Majority independent scientific opinion suggests badger culling could make bovine TB worse. And hundreds of thousands of us have spoken out, time after time.

Yet here we are. Unheard. And our badgers are dying.

I listened this morning on the radio to Elizabeth Truss, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, uttering the same verbal diarrhoea that we used to suffer from Owen Patterson and no doubt spoon-fed to her by the NFU. The blind arrogance of these people is overwhelming.

In May 2015, the United Kingdom will elect its next government (with or without Scotland). The general election is now the vehicle for change that we must embrace. A pledge to end the badger cull will need to be written into any political manifesto that expects my support. 

I trust that you feel the same.

Badgers - and this Disreputable Government

The last week has been terrible for badgers, and things are only going to get worse:

Tuesday 26th August: British Government quietly release plans to kill up to 1876 badgers in Somerset and Gloucestershire this year.

Friday 29th August: Badger Trust high court legal challenge against the badger cull is overturned.

Tuesday 2nd September: Badger vaccination projects are announced to be taking place around the country.

I don't approve when I see a story of vaccination being used to bury the real news of the imminent and unjustifiable murder of badgers.

Make no mistake, our nation is in uproar about what is being done in Somerset and Gloucestershire. More than 300,000 people signed Brian May's anti cull petition in 2013, but the cull continued. It claimed the lives of almost 2000 badgers, cost around £7,000,000 and the independent expert team hired to study the results described it as 'ineffective and inhumane'.

At this point, any sensible person would look at the overwhelming scientific evidence against the cull, the view of their own expert panel, the will of the people, and accept that they had made a mistake.

But not this government. Instead they fired the expert panel, and told the contractors to get the guns back out.

This cull is an abomination, which the government are pursuing at all costs and sweeping deftly under the media radar. Many still do not know there is to be a badger cull this year. It is up to each of us to share the truth. Please share the news of this imminent cull with friends and family:

http://www.networkforanimals.org/news/2014-badger-cull-given-go-ahead 

 

Badger cull expansion is abandoned

The government has abandoned its planned expansion of badger culling to reduce TB in cattle, according to a BBC report.

“The environment department’s original plan was to announce up to 10 new cull areas in South West England each year,” the report states.

Defra’s own independent assessment shows that culls in two pilot areas were not effective, and raised questions about their humaneness.

But it wasn’t all good news: “These pilot culls will continue, though there will be no independent oversight to assess their future performance".

In a Commons statement, the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson proposed a programme of vaccination around the edges of the most badly affected parts of the country. “This”, he said, “would create a buffer zone of immunity that would stop the disease from spreading.”

Wasn’t that what the experts wanted in the first place?

Defra's astonishing new TB figures

New figures just released by Defra show that bovine TB was declining in UK herds - just as Paterson claimed the disease was 'spreading' - and that Wales's no-cull, biosecurity and vaccination policy led to a 24% drop in herd infections.

Wales's biosecurity measures, combined with its small-scale badger vaccination programme, was astonishingly successful.

Read more here: http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2281811/defras_astonishing_new_tb_figures_an_end_to_the_cull.html 

Don't Cull, say Trusts

While the first badger culls have been carried out in Somerset and Gloucestershire, The Wildlife Trusts continue to vaccinate badgers on their nature reserves and, with farmers, on surrounding land.

The cull, claimed to be the best way to reduce TB in cattle (bTB), is opposed by wildlife organisations, scientists and the public. More than 300,000 people supported a government e-petition against culling. Although sympathetic with farmers, The Wildlife Trusts are firmly against the cull and will not allow culling on their land.

Two years ago Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust began to vaccinate badgers in high bTB risk areas to demonstrate its practicality. There are now 13 Trusts either vaccinating badgers or raising funds to do so. Some are vaccinating in the zone between high and low risk areas - the 'firewall' approach.

They will continue to press for greater emphasis on badger vaccination. But the long-term goal is the development of a cattle vaccine alongside other measures to reduce bTB such as improved farm biosecurity, restrictions on livestock movements and breeding genetic resistance in cattle.

For the latest news and to donate to vaccination projects visit
wildlifetrusts.org/badgers-and-bovineTB  

Somerset Badger Cull Given Extension

The government agency Natural England (there is nothing 'natural' about this gang of bloodthirsty individuals) has granted a licence to extend the badger cull in Somerset until 1st November. The planned six-week trial came to an end on Monday but the firm charged with slaughtering our badger population asked for more time after its 'marksmen' fell short of murdering the target of 70% of the badger population.

Government ministers and the NFU, that union of wealthy landowning farmers who don't care a fig about our wildlife, say badger culling is needed to control cattle TB. For those of you who read my blog you will know that this is so contrary to the truth behind the spread of bovine TB and yet these wretched people are hell bent on destroying a protected species of our wildlife instead of embarking on a course of vaccinating them as an acceptable alternative.

David Cameron, Owen Paterson and their other right wing allies have polarised the UK voting public over this issue. They have totally underestimated the groundswell of hatred that this has engendered for the coalition government, amongst  reasonable minded people who voted for them. I am a retired Managing Director. In my lifetime I have supported an ethic of business building to create employment, to increase incomes to be spent on the High Street and - yes - I have voted Conservative. But, no more. I now have more time to consider the political motives of our elected government and I am ashamed of what the coalition are doing viz-a-viz the NHS, the Welfare State, Education, Banking, Climate Change and above all - the Environment. You, Mr Cameron, aided by Mr Paterson, have lost the votes of my entire family. Your arrogance in ignoring scientific evidence that has concluded, and been reported to you, that a badger cull is not only futile, may well increase the incidence of TB in cattle by perturbation, and is a crime against a protected species, may well lead to your downfall. To extend the licence for the cull in Somerset is the action of a desperate man and a breach of trust of all those, like me, who voted for you.

Well, let me say this. What goes around comes around. You might not believe that your action and that of Owen Paterson in this crime against our wildlife is a major issue. I believe that you will be remembered for this and you should dwell on your decision when you pack your bags and leave No. 10.

And, frankly, I cannot wait for that to happen.

Badger Cull Extension Sought

A failure to kill enough badgers (paradoxically I call this a success) has forced those behind England's controversial cull to seek an extension of the night-time shoots in a last-ditch attempt to make up the numbers. Culling is intended to curb the rise of tuberculosis in cattle but experts have warned that dragging out the killing gives more opportunity for badgers to flee the gunmen and could increase TB infections. Mind you, that presupposes that those badgers that escape the gunsights are actually infected, doesn't it?

The UK's leading badger expert, Professor Rosie Woodroffe, said: "I would stop the culls now. They have failed to meet the legal licensing target. There are now many serious questions about this whole approach to TB control."

Ministers are expected to issue a written statement today to parliament. Environment secretary Owen Paterson, bedfellow of the NFU, has argued that the cull is an essential part of TB control even though leading scientists have dismissed the policy as "mindless" and "a costly distraction" from improving vaccination and controls on cattle movements.