Badgers, TB, culling and conservation

26/06/2024

The Badger Trust isn't getting it all its own way on this ridiculous post of theirs. The irony of 'struggling wildlife' when much of it is struggling due to the tenfold increase in badger numbers is obviously lost on their faithful. Well done to those people spreading the true facts on there. Do go and join in the fun if you aren't already banned - they banned us a while ago for suggesting that the culls were working rather well, and why didn't they care about the suffering of the badgers with TB?

24/06/2024

Imagine how different it would be if the likes of Robin Page were in charge of the Wildlife and Badger Trusts. A proper practical countryman, farmer and conservationist, when that word actually meant conserving all species and helping the struggling ones, rather than ignoring them and worshipping only the large, glamorous and successful predators.

23/06/2024

Let's have a blast of Jeremy Clarkson, and sod the infantile stupidity of grownups dressed in badger suits waving placards saying 'I am innocent'. Anthropomorphic pound shop 'conservation' at its most toxic.

Jezza, on the other hand, is spot on.

22/06/2024

You do wonder whether these nice ladies with their 'save badgers, save nature' banners in London today ever stop and think how much their darling stripies actually destroy nature.

Those of us out here in the real world can only despair at the utter madness of this campaign.

21/06/2024

Where you start with this level of wilful ignorance, heaven knows. Happily there was a vet on hand to put this ridiculous woman right.

20/06/2024

Yes, predator control brings spectacular successes. Predator control, obviously, can be celebrated, so long as it involves the word 'rat'.

Perhaps we need some re-naming of common predators. Gulls could become 'white wing-rats', corvids 'black wing-rats'. Maybe badgers could become 'greater pied rats'.

We've said many times that if badgers resembled huge rats, we'd have left TB behind in the 1970's. Imagine how our hedgehogs, bumble bees and ground nesting birds would have benefited too.

19/06/2024

The Prime Minister said the Conservatives had been the only party to make a commitment to continue badger culling

19/06/2024

'Diversionary feeding' of predators is the latest buzz word. And what could possibly go wrong with that?

A feeding trial by researchers from two Scottish universities is helping to save the Scottish capercaillie from extinction.

17/06/2024

The double standards around wildlife management are ludicrous. It's fine to shoot foxes, deer, rabbits..... but a dead badger found shot (outwith the legal cull) gets reported to the police as a 'wildlife crime'.
You can sit out overnight and shoot a fox which is predating wader nests. You'd be breaking the law if you did the same with a badger.

No wonder our curlews are heading for extinction. This law is genuinely an ass.

16/06/2024

Day 7 of our Keep the Cull week. Our decade of badger culling in England has proved its worth. There have been no unexpected dramas or incidents, the vast majority of people accept the culls as totally uncontroversial, and the results are just as good as we all hoped they'd be.

It's crazy, then, to think that we're worried about a new government which might be more influenced by glossy false propaganda from a noisy minority who ought to know better. (The Badger Trust has been widely ridiculed on Twitter for claiming that badgers are facing extinction. 🙄 )

What a new govt ought to be doing is to follow Germany's lead with a badger shooting season from August till October, across the whole of the British Isles.

Imagine how useful that would be, for farmers and conservationists. It would also benefit local councils who struggle with badger damage to roads, flood barriers, canal banks and graveyards.

Will it happen? Well, we can but dream. In the meantime everyone can do their part by emailing local papers, contacting candidates, spreading posts and memes across social media.

We'll give it our best shot. 💪

16/06/2024

Disease control should not be a political issue. It's now quite obvious what works, and what doesn't.

The next government needs to ignore the hysterical fluff from the noisy minority who are totally unaffected by the horrors of TB, take Nigel's advice here and let us keep on doing what's working, right across Wales as well.

16/06/2024

The Badger Trust constantly lecture us all on the need for biosecurity. (Thereby tacitly admitting that badgers spread TB, but hey....) However it's interesting to note that neither of the large and expensive fence installations here are entirely badger proof. The first, a still from that viral video, shows that height of fence makes little difference to a determined badger. The second, from RSPB Minsmere in response to the disaster shown in our pinned post, will only be effective if metal plates or netting are sunk into the ground to stop the badger burrowing underneath. The electric fencing will discourage it from climbing over, but four strands of electric fencing starting at just above ground level are what is generally recommended.

A few questions spring to mind.

One - do we really want our countryside divided up by ugly fencing like this, reminiscent of a concentration camp?

Two - who is going to pay for this fencing, which is both expensive to erect and to maintain?

Three - so where do the fenced out badgers go, in this new landscape of badger-proof fencing?

Somehow we don't think that the Badger Trust will be able to supply any useful answers.

15/06/2024

Keep the Badger Cull - day six. And a trawl through the archives found this from Dr Ueli Zellweger, a Swiss vet and bTB expert. This is as good an explanation you'll find of the problems involved in vaccinating against TB, and why, a hundred years on, nothing more effective than the BCG has yet been developed. We need to stop pretending that TB is just a simple problem which can be solved by a nice jab.

The cost involved is staggering too. There are various estimates out there, but up to £600 per badger is a figure often quoted.

The sheer dishonesty of the Badger Trust, which wants us to stop culling and start jabbing, is jaw-dropping. All this information is out in the public domain.

Anyway here you are, from the Bovine TB blogspot. The only point we would challenge is that 60% of badgers can be cage trapped. Going by the proportionately tiny number of badgers already vaccinated in various schemes, they'd be lucky to trap half that number.

'....it is interesting to read the wise words of Dr Ueli Zellweger. He is a Swiss veterinary surgeon now living in the UK, of some 30 years' experience in the field of TB. And I quote -

Why BCG does not perform like other vaccines.

In any normal infection the body defence works by production of vast numbers of antibodies..... which can be stimulated by ordinary vaccines.
But this does not work for Tuberculosis - it never did and it never will - because the tubercule bacteria have a waxy coat to which antibodies cannot attach. TB therefore causes a so-called humoral body defence; that means the .... bacteria are attacked by enzymes and white blood cells mainly ....... This defence is much more unspecific and slower than the usual one by antibodies.

Any BCG vaccine stimulates this humoral defence only, but never prevents an infection; it may keep it on a low scale maybe. There is no other vaccine available and there most probably will never be another one.

BCG's efficiency was never over 80%. As seen in trials, one cannot trap more than 60% of all badgers roaming around. Therefore if 60 out of 100 badgers are vaccinated with a vaccine only efficient to a maximum of 50 - 80% - in healthy animals! - you end up with far less than 50 animals with a rather dubious protection.'

15/06/2024

Dear Labour Party,

Don't be idiots.

Yours sincerely,

Britain's livestock farmers.

14/06/2024

Day five of our Keep the Cull week. And in view of the political skulduggery heading our way, we thought we'd feature the views of the man the Labour Party should be listening to - well known Cheshire cattle vet Den Leonard.

This piece by him, from 2019, is well worth a read.

"News today of the peer-reviewed scientific analysis of the recent badger culls reflects what has been predicted by the science. Where there has been sufficient time for the outcome of the recent badger cull zones to be measured we’re seeing reductions in cattle TB of over 50%, with no increases in TB through so called ‘perturbation’ affected surrounding areas.
I have been called all sorts of names over the years by people for supporting the science and evidence. It wasn’t about badgers for me; our battle was with a bacterium that infected all kinds of animals.
TB wasn’t an important disease to me when I qualified in 1993. I’d grown up in Cheshire where the vets who were older than my dad talked of days of reactors and breakdowns in ways that were meaningless to me. Back then the country had almost no cattle testing positive for TB, it was merely confined to tiny localised pockets of the South West.
Years later I rued those days that I, like so many others, had been blasé about their warnings of the epidemic to come. As my career progressed, I watched this disease insidiously creep out from those tiny pockets. The misnamed bacteria radiated taking all in its wake, being carried across the country in a newly protected population of badgers who sadly were highly susceptible to its cause. Millions were spent on the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) aiming to inform us all how to proceed. After nearly ten years of study a politicised, prematurely proffered opinion was recorded that suited the political wind of the time. It set us on a multi-decade argument, rather than settling the debate, which had been its remit.

Vets were clear what needed to be done. 350 of us physically signed a letter to ask the government to reverse the ban on badger control. By then farm breakdown numbers had risen from 88 to 3000. Yet another government review of TB and the RBCTs long term findings in 2006 thankfully did conclude that reducing infected populations of badgers did indeed reduce cattle TB in the area where this was done properly.
The government designed a policy using the science and evidence to deal with the disease in wildlife. What is particularly pleasing and reassuring from a veterinary and scientific point of view is that this research was not in vain. It informed us that badger population management would reduce cattle TB. It told us how to mitigate against the theoretical risks of perturbation, that are still today being talked about by those well-meaning activists. It gave us confidence that we would prevail if we did the job properly.
Farmers, who have already lost countless fortunes to TB, are being asked not only to pay but also to do that work. As is so typical of farmers they’ve got their head down and quietly night and day, against so much adversity and intimidation, got on with the job of trying to reduce TB in wildlife and cattle.
Their aim as ever is to be proud of the health and diversity of all animals on their farm. Healthy badgers alongside healthy cattle – that’s their goal."

Den Leonard, BVSc DBR MRCVS, is Farm Commercial Director for VetPartners Ltd and has been a practising farm vet for 26 years in the North West of England. He is a prominent speaker on the topic with a keen interest in the science, evidence and history of the disease.

13/06/2024

Day 4 of our Keep the Cull week. And this one is the root of all our problems.

The Protection of Badgers Act has forced our sustainable and (largely) healthy badger population to change from respected but rarely seen country dwellers into stressed and overcrowded ghetto families.

There are no benefits whatsoever to this. The badgers themselves are on average 2 kg lighter than they were fifty years ago. TB has spread among them right across Wales, the West Country and the Midlands now.

Allowing the badger numbers to rocket like this, unchecked, has been totally irresponsible. We all condemn the archetypal mad cat lady with her 25 sickly cats and kittens jammed into her tiny bungalow. But what we've done to badgers is exactly the same.

In our shrinking countryside, we need to manage our wildlife so that our vulnerable species can thrive. Sadly today it seems that intelligent wildlife management is totally out of fashion.

12/06/2024

Progress in England's HR area. What a joy to see that. Numbers of cattle slaughtered coming down too, which considering the use of the gamma blood test with its poor specificity, is very good news.

12/06/2024

Day three of our 'Keep the Cull' week, and a brief look at badger vaccination. They're a few years into phasing out badger culling and phasing in badger vaccination in Ireland, and it's pretty obvious that the graph isn't heading in an encouraging direction.

But why should it? Jabbing random badgers with an expensive live vaccine which has, in its hundred years of existence, totally failed to beat TB in the human population, was never going to be a great success.

A recent four year trial in Ireland with badgers and BCG found that 19.9% of vaccinated badgers became infected with TB, while 23% of non-vaccinated badgers also became infected. So a small protection against infection.

However.... a complete lack of effect from BCG vaccination on the *infectivity* of vaccinated badgers was observed.

As the study concludes - 'However, no reduction of infectivity was found in our study. The lack of effect of BCG vaccination on infectivity in the general badger population is thus at odds with the hypothesis that vaccination, by reducing disease progression, reduces the infectivity of vaccinated and subsequently infected badgers.'

So what on earth is the point of spending millions of pounds on a complicated project which can only fail?

Paper produced by UCD Centre for Veterinary Epidemiology, UCD School of Veterinary Medicine, University College Dublin, Wageningen Institute of Animal Sciences, Netherlands.

11/06/2024

Day two of our Keep the Cull week, and the focus today is on the effect of tuberculosis on badgers. Those of us who have seen a badger in the final throes of this hideous disease will never forget it.

The Badger Trust's stated aim is to 'stop the cull'. Not 'stop tuberculosis'. It's a measure of their worthlessness as a welfare organisation that they totally ignore the suffering of hundreds of badgers which die slowly and horribly every year of TB, all the while infecting their sett mates and every other creature they come into contact with.

10/06/2024

The Badger Trust has dedicated this week to a 'stop the cull' campaign. So in response we're going to have a Keep the Cull week. Every day we'll have a reason to keep on badger culling, so please join in by sharing our memes and posts. It's worth following the Badger Trust FB page, as you have to be a follower in order to comment. As they've blocked us, you'll have to share screen grabs rather than links, but it's all worthwhile.

01/06/2024

As with all disasters badgery, it's a numbers game. Of course 'badgers and hedgehogs have co-existed for millennia' as the badger obsessives tell us, but badger numbers have increased tenfold in the last fifty years (Mammal Society figures) and hedgehogs cannot cope.

Research from Oxford University tells us that there will be an absence of hedgehogs where badger density exceeds 16 badgers per 10 sq km. This figure had been reached across much of Southern England by the mid 1980's, and the badger population has rocketed again since then.

We desperately need to restore the balance of nature. Hedgehogs are resilient and it's brilliant to see them returning to the areas of England where the badger culls are taking place.

There are no downsides to culling badgers - the falling incidence of bTB is of course the intended benefit, but the happy side effects of hedgehog recovery and the benefits for ground nesting birds and waders, plus bumble bees, leverets and so on, can only be a huge plus for biodiversity.

24/05/2024

Biodiversity is the current buzzword. And with badger numbers increasing tenfold over the last fifty years (Mammal Society figures) badgers are having a disastrous effect on our biodiversity.

We cannot afford to lose more pollinators, but every year we hear of more bumble bee nests being dug out and destroyed by badgers. We are told by researchers at Oxford University that hedgehogs simply disappear where badger density exceeds 2.27 setts per 10 sq kms. By the 1980's that figure had been reached in the West Country and parts of Wales, and badger numbers have increased massively since then.

The latest instance of badgers wiping out wader chicks has just occurred on an RSPB reserve. Fencing against badgers is fraught with problems and insanely expensive. Were it foxes causing this destruction of the vulnerable, the RSPB can - and does - have them shot. This is not an option with the badger, and it's crazy.

For the sake of our fragile wildlife - our biodiversity - we simply have to keep on culling badgers, and not just to stop the spread of TB. Our hedgehogs, bees and waders will be wiped out if we continue to treat this overabundant voracious pest as if it's something special to be preserved, rather than just another pest species like fox, deer and rat.

22/05/2024

The Badger Fanclub, sorry, 'Trust', has dipped into its huge festering tub of comforting fables and come up with this jaw-dropping item of pure fantasy.

So badgers are apparently 'shaping and supporting species diversity'. Whaaat? Like destroying avocet nests and nestlings in RSPB reserves? Digging out and destroying bumble bee nests? Rendering hedgehogs extinct in most of the West Country? How the fudging heck have they got the nerve to suggest that this is anything other than causing devastation to our most vulnerable wildlife, and supporting species extinction rather than 'diversity'?

Well done to the poster who wrote the comment below. We have to keep on - and on - pointing out the nonsense churned out by the Badger Fan Club.

16/05/2024

A sadly familiar tale, this, from Wester Ross in the Highlands. Twenty years ago, badgers were scarce or absent there, it's not ideal badger country to put it mildly. But the overgrown - and overprotected - stripey weasels just keep heading north as their numbers increase, and this is often the first sign that they're about.

It's beyond crazy that they're still protected.

15/05/2024

RSPB reserve fails to stop badger(s) from raiding gull and wader nests. Reminiscent, this, of our pinned post, and further proof that the huge over-population of badgers we have nowadays is unsustainable and disastrous for other species.

Monday morning in Burton Mere Wetlands’ office always means reflecting on the prior week, and weekend in particular. However, as enjoyable as the first true taste

15/05/2024

But they can't. We know that TB has spread gradually outwards from the original hotspots in the West Country, where fifty years ago it was recommended that badger culling was continued round every new TB breakdown. (Had this been done, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.)

As can be seen from this map, enough tuberculous badgers have managed to survive the M1 and seed TB into the East Midlands. But the huge conurbations of Liverpool - Manchester - Sheffield have defeated them.

The TB breakdowns which turn up in LR areas, on the other hand, do generally arrive there by cattle movements, and are quickly identified by post movement testing and slaughterhouse surveillance. The area remains Low Risk.

13/05/2024

Just a reminder that responses to this consultation need to be in by midnight tonight, so if you haven't already done so, take some time out and get it filled in if you can. Before you start - when you click on this link, scroll down to the bottom and underneath 'Related', click on the middle link. This sets out all the proposals and also puts up all the questions which come up in the survey, so you can plan your responses before filling in the actual form.

Needless to say, the Badger Trust has already told its followers exactly how to respond to each question, and this will almost certainly be counterproductive!

This site contains consultations that are run by Defra.

12/05/2024

We're incredibly fortunate that Nigel Owens, Welsh farmer and hugely respected international rugby referee, publicly supports all aspects of badger control, both for conservation and for TB reduction. He has a lighter touch than Clarkson, is never abrasive or divisive - this is a typically calm and considered reply of his to the florid and ridiculous claims of the Badger Trust. A good reminder that it's not the badger that's our enemy - it's the huge numbers of badgers which are the problem. What we, our cattle and our wildlife need is a much smaller population of much healthier badgers. Comments like Nigel's here will impress - and hopefully influence - the uncommitted far more than any raging rant directed at badgerists.

To get the measure of Nigel Owens himself, have a look at his pinned post on his Twitter account. A great sporting figure and a powerful voice for Welsh farmers. Thank you, Nigel.

05/05/2024

This chart of hedgehog density in Britain deserves some study. Even before 1992, hedgehogs were struggling in the SW of England - which as we well know is peak badger country as well as historically the highest for TB incidence.

Of course the TB status of the hungry badger makes no difference to the outcome for hedgehogs. However as TB was spreading in that timeframe across the West Midlands and Wales, hedgehog populations were declining at about the same rate.

Further proof, if any were needed, that a rapidly expanding badger population leads to a rapidly shrinking hedgehog population, as well as an inevitable rise in bTB incidence.

After all, for an ailing tuberculous badger, a little nest of defenceless hoglets under its nose makes an easy and nutritious meal.