‘Pointless killing’ is newest fate for Welsh badgers

The contrast is as marked as the black and white stripes on a badger’s snout.  In England, badgers will be vaccinated to try and halt the spread of bovine TB.  In Wales, badgers will be killed.

** UPDATE ** (15/04/09)  The Bovine TB Advisory Group has published their final report (England only) on the work they have been involved with over the last three years (the group is winding up and passing the information onto the recently established Bovine TB Eradication Group).  The report also has an excellent Bovine TB ‘the facts’ section, aimed at overcoming much of the misunderstanding felt in this complex topic (Annex D).  **

As you might remember reading in our previous blogs on this issue, the tussle between badger protection and efforts to halt bovine TB has been long and complicated.  Hundreds of Woodland Trust supporters objected to plans to cull badgers as an attempt to halt the spread of bovine TB because the science didn’t add up, and happily last year the option of wide spread culling was dismissed in England. DEFRA has now announced that a vaccine is soon to be trialled to combat bovine TB in England. We applaud the decision to listen to this evidence, not to cull badgers, but to try vaccination instead.

Badgers are still at risk in Wales

In Wales however, the Welsh Assembley has just announced it will carry out badger culling for the same reason. Slammed by the Woodland Trust as ‘pointless killing’, this decision is made despite ten years of objective, independent and peer-reviewed research that showed badger culling is not effective in tackling this dreadful disease, and that it can in fact make matters worse.

The culling in an “intensive” pilot area in Pembrokeshire will take place alongside other measures. The announcement shows a focus on completing these trials but not on gathering evidence of their effectiveness – but it is to be hoped the plans include some way of monitoring the individual effects of each type of action, otherwise how will we know whether or not the killing of up to 1,000 badgers has made any difference?

More worrying, Welsh Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones wants to bring in “secondary legislation” to enable the cull to take place.  You can see the full announcement from Welsh Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones here. We are very concerned this might mean compulsory access for culling. Landowners like the Woodland Trust, who disagree with the cull, may be left without a choice.

Bovine TB is both financially crippling and heartbreaking for farmers. Badgers are one of our best-loved woodland mammals, and their local extinction could contravene the Bern Convention. That’s why any method used to tackle it has to be based on firm evidence, and capable of proper evaluation.

Threat of Judicial Review clarifies badgers’ fate in Wales

After the recent good news that badgers in England have been saved from the threat of mass culling, the fate of badgers in Wales looked less promising earlier in the year.

In April the Welsh Assembly was perceived by the public and the world’s media as having voted to allow badger culling . Elin Jones, Minister for Rural Affairs in the Welsh Assembly Government, told the Assembly that the most effective way to deal with infection and cross-infection sources was to cull badgers in “TB high incidence areas”.

Passions ran high at this announcement – especially after England’s positive decision not to take this route – and animal activists in particular planned to take action by visiting the Assembly to protest.

Happily, fears that badgers are at risk in Wales have now been quashed, after national charity The Badger Trust moved to launch a Judicial Review of the decision. Lawyers for Elin Jones have now confirmed that she has NOT made a decision to cull badgers in Wales, claiming that the statement simply “reflects the beginning of a process as to how, if at all, particular aspects of the Welsh Assembly Government’s TB Eradication Programme could be implemented.”

More good news for our stripey woodland friends!

A great day for badgers – and for public pressure!

© RSPCA

Last week’s press release from DEFRA confirmed there will be NO widespread culling of badgers in England in an effort to halt Bovine TB, but a £20million investment in usable vaccines and cattle controls instead. 

A great day for badgers – and for public pressure!

Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn acknowledged the decision made by Government not to introduce licenses to farmers to allow badger culling was informed by a wide range of scientific evidence and discussion with farming, veterinary and wildlife and conservation groups plus many others, and supported the verdict of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB (ISG) and EFRA Select Committee Report.  England has been waiting with bated breath for a decision about badgers since the Welsh Assembly Government’s announcement in April this year that culling would be allowed in Wales, in a ‘pilot’ TB hotspot. 

And almost 650 people objected to a policy to cull badgers as part of the approach to help control the disease via the Woodland Trust alone, during DEFRA’s 2006 consultation.  People were concerned that the effects on nature conservation a widespread cull would cause had not been properly considered, as well as animal welfare implications. 

Look at what those letters have helped achieve! 

The EFRA Committee’s full report however, released since the Government’s announcement on 22nd July, is not quite as positive.  The Report recognises that in the long term the government is right to make spending on vaccines the priority, but EFRA thinks in the short term government do need to look at cattle testing, animal husbandry, farm bio-security measures – and culling.  EFRA recommends including culling as a suite of measures to control bTB. This report is EFRAs opinion and doesn’t change the ‘no cull’ decision of a few weeks back but it could cause the Government to have a rethink of the decision and will certainly lead to a great deal of further discussion at the least.

Black day for badgers – and farmers

The decision to cull badgers in Wales as part of the fight against bovine TB is ill-judged. Its effects will ripple much wider than the chosen culling area, and they could hit farmers as well as badgers.

 

© RSPCA

The Welsh Assembly Government’s announcement this week that culling will be allowed in a “pilot” TB hotspot area makes no sense. First, it flies in the face of the most comprehensive research into the issue. Trials over the last ten years or so in England, carried out for the Government by independent scientists, concluded that badger culling could make no meaningful contribution to the control of bovine TB.  Prof John Bourne, who led this research, has even told Welsh Assembly members that culling could actually spread the disease. 

 

Second, the cull will not, as claimed, add anything to the scientific debate.  The work led by Prof Bourne was conducted rigorously, subjected to independent audit, and written up in authoritative peer-reviewed scientific journals. It was the most comprehensive piece of research to date on this issue and it is hard to see what a single trial, which does not appear to have clear objectives, could add to it.

 

Third, and even more worrying, as a result of the announcement in Wales, pressure is building for culling elsewhere. The Ulster Farmers’ Union were quick this week to call for measures to tackle the “wildlife reservoir” of the disease, even though in Northern Ireland TB levels have almost halved since 2002 without any badger culling at all.  Tighter restrictions on overdue TB tests, increased use of supplementary Gamma Interferon testing (a more effective test than the prevalent skin test), and more sophisticated systems to monitor and track the spread of the disease, all introduced in that period, might have something to do with this.

 

Feelings on the issue of badgers and bovine TB understandably run high. On one hand there are the farmers suffering not just the crippling effects on their livelihoods, but also the trauma of seeing the animals they care for slaughtered. On the other, the possible eradication of whole populations of one of our iconic woodland species provokes public outrage.

 

In England, both farmers and conservationists wait with bated breath to hear whether the Government will lift the moratorium on badger culling. The Government has dragged its heels on this issue, and the announcement in Wales will just add fuel to the already vociferous pro-cull lobby.  

 

But the Government must make its decision based on the independent scientific trials, for which it paid at least £50 million, rather than bowing to one side or the other. Badgers must not be made a scapegoat, but at the same time a proper programme of measures focused on cattle must be resourced.  Otherwise it begs the question, why bother commissioning such research in the first place?