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IMO Farmerboi has summed up WHY scientific research needs to be carried out, not just a cull but one that takes the time and effort to find out whether the badgers that have been culled ARE infected with M. bovis (TB causing bacterium).
A cull that simply kills on sight is NOT the answer, the data must be gathered before, during and after the proposed cull to ensure that the maximum amount of information can be elucidated which is then used to direct where policy goes from then on.
Please,no more "jokes" about culling farmers - it causes offence and is unnecessary.
Thank you to Farmerboi for those pertinent comments, it is easy to lose sight of the real people involved.......
Fully agree with rod vw, none of us would live the lives we do (or even exist) if man had not interfered with nature. Man is also part of nature.
I think many posters are suffering from the 'fluffy bunny' syndrome, there was a very good article in last Thursday's Independent about the very real correlation between the large increase in the number of badgers to the huge decline in the hedgehog population. 30 million in the 1950's down to 1 million today. Of course there are other factors involved mostly involving man but I for one would like to see more hedgehogs even at the expense of badgers that cause damage in other ways besides being carriers of bovine TB.
Man has always and always will interfere in nature, what we have now is a product of man's interfrerence in the past and not usually to the benefit of everyone.
Poor hedgehogs. A perhaps better correlation with the fall in hedgehog numbers is the increase in road traffic. In the 1950s only 1 family in 10 had a car. Go figure. Don't try to shift the blame onto the badgers.
I haven't seen a live hedgehog where I live for about 4 years now. There used to be a big individual who visited my garden to eat slugs and bird food. I dug a litte trench to make it easier for him to come in under my back garden gate. He was the only local hedgehog known to me and my neighbours. Probably the only hedgehog foraging around our estate of 600 dwellings. He was even discussed at meetings of the Residents' Association. One morning I found him dead in the access road not far from my front door. It made me really angry that some unthinking driver caused his unnecessary death. He was big for a hedgehog and easily seen and avoided.
We are very low on wildlife here even though it is on the edge of the city. Not one sparrow. No blackbirds. No squirrels. No rabbits. The Council's Streetcare Department still keeps destroying hedgerows to create bus lanes. We used to see rabbits, foxes and deer, and an occasional badger at night. Now nothing but traffic.
Most of the neighbours' houses are now BTLs and the gardens gravelled over. Very few lawns, trees and srubs left. The tenants don't have any bird feeders or nest boxes, and clearly are not interested, or perhaps unaware that there are so few wild birds still in the area.
IMO Farmerboi has summed up WHY scientific research needs to be carried out, not just a cull but one that takes the time and effort to find out whether the badgers that have been culled ARE infected with M. bovis (TB causing bacterium).
A cull that simply kills on sight is NOT the answer, the data must be gathered before, during and after the proposed cull to ensure that the maximum amount of information can be elucidated which is then used to direct where policy goes from then on.
Please,no more "jokes" about culling farmers - it causes offence and is unnecessary.
Thank you to Farmerboi for those pertinent comments, it is easy to lose sight of the real people involved.......
Dave
The research also needs to be widened to include the cattle, why they are prone to TB and not just centre on the badger, I know it will probably never happen though.
A big, docile, disease prone, genetically weak animal kept alive half the year by a combination of artificial feed and manufactured drugs, packed together in farmyards, sheds and fields to further increase the risk.
Remember when i was about 7 and we did the usual school farm trip. Teacher saying the cow is a lovely natural animal, lives in a field and eats nothing but grass and gives us milk which is so good for us, then we all drink a glass full.
TB doesn't just affect the modern, high output Holstein-Friesian but all cattle, including rare breeds, Adam, on Countryfile, has lost Longhorn oxen and White Parks for instance. TB is therefore threatening genetic diversity in cattle rather than lack of diversity causing it. The really intensive units which keep cattle indoors all the time may end up being the only way to viably produce milk.
It is possible that the increase in infections among badgers is due to their population density in some areas, that they are stressed by the number of other badgers around and/or their food is getting harder to find due to competition with others. Research is needed into the badgers to help rid them of the disease which is leading to so many of them dying a horrible death.
______________________________________________________________ Steve
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