TB OR NOT TB

Followers of my musings and crosser outbursts will know my views about politicians’ frequent displays of ignorance of the science relating to badgers and TB, their fawning to a worried farming lobby who have been misled and the government’s support of cruelty to these sentient mammals (to the badgers, that is, not the politicians!). Many of us have protested and scientists have pointed out the evidential failings in the badger culling policy. Nevertheless, badgers continue to be slaughtered at eye-popping rates. The Badger Trust says more than 67,000 badgers have been killed since 2013. I repeat: more than sixty-seven thousand! And this is happening over a steadily increasing area that now stretches from Cornwall to Cheshire. Many of us have been questioning not only the blatant cruelty of this policy against one of our favourite mammals, the very mascot of the County Wildlife Trusts, but also the efficacy of the whole programme.

The science has been ignored by government for a long while but it is hard to continue in the face of the latest research by the Zoological Society of London, conducted by a team under the leadership of Cally Ham. Using tracking collars on badgers, they have found in their field research that the animals range over an area more than 60% greater in extent as a result of culling. Actual contact between badgers and cattle has been shown to be rare – faeces and urine are more likely to be vectors of bovine tuberculosis than physical contact. It follows that, with badgers travelling further into more fields where of course they urinate & defaecate, the risk of TB transmission to cattle increases even though there are fewer badgers. This work provides yet more evidence of the unintended adverse consequences of badger culling that scientists and naturalists have been warning about for years.

Not only that, but culling was found to encourage badgers to stay longer in their setts by about 1.5 hours every night on average, which makes them harder to shoot. Apart from, surprise surprise, an aversion to being shot, this seems likely to be because, with fewer badgers foraging in an area, food is easier to find.

Vaccination is not so easy but eliminates the problems associated with culling, Wales already uses it and does not cull. Cornwall is looking at a large scale vaccination trial. Hopefully, others will start listening to the scientists and follow suit.

You can read the paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology, DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.13512.