From the letters page of the Bournemouth Echo (14th May 2013) a reader replies to my article. Interestingly enough, I was willing to put my name to my convictions; this person ‘name and address withheld’ obviously thinks differently…
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/yoursay/letterstotheeditor/10417646.Badger_cull_is_long_overdue/
The badger cull is not a mistake, it is long overdue. I speak as a keen naturalist.
Lee Connor, in Friday’s Echo, gives a lot of space to an emotional rant against the government and claims a wealth of scientific evidence and brings forward a lot of spurious facts to argue against a badger cull. He, and many like him, need to cut through the emotion and anti-Tory rhetoric and face facts. Badgers are a massive reservoir for TB in the wild and create a huge bill paid for by taxpayers for compensation to farmers. Also, their numbers are beginning to escalate greatly to the detriment of other wildlife.
Does Mr Connor not realise that in a natural environment all wild animals are predated upon and this controls their numbers? In the world we have created no such predators exist so we have a duty to control pest species however cuddly they may appear; controlling is not cleansing. Less emotional politicking and more realism please.
Original article: https://leeconnorblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/badger-cull-is-a-big-mistake/
Infuriating!!!!!! one maybe two replies to this, last culling trials, 11,000 culled badgers, 1.2% had TB = fact – massive reservoir????
Huge bill?? if you go through a local charity, it costs, £20 per badger trapped and vaccinate over a four year term – fact, nor is it necessary to vaccinate every badger! – fact
If you listen to the Tory arses – it will cost £700 per badger,to vaccinate EVERY badger!! – false
Does this commenter not realise, the reason there is no natural predation, is because humans wiped out the natural predators, which leaves us with the most relentless, bloodthirsty, killing for fun predator this earth has ever seen – MAN = FACT
The only detriment to our wildlife, is the sort of people, who believe, this tripe! Still they drone on and on, never have they anything new to offer and how I would love to lock this person in a room with the many world renowned scientists this country has to offer, and ask him/her, to provide evidence/facts that will back them up. Dammit, I’ll even sit down with them eye to eye, and find out why they believe they are right and tell them eye to eye, why they are wrong!!
And before anything is said, I have visited TB infected farms, one particularly bad, lost 6 cows previous week to visit, I went with a vaccinator, we carried out sett survey with a view to vaccinating the badgers, and guess what! no badger activity whatsoever, the setts hadn’t been used in some time, no animal tracks, or prints leading into the farm from any direction.
INTENSIVE FARMING, GREEDY AND LAZY FARMING, FLAWED TB SKIN TEST, KEEPING IT IN THE HERDS, & THE TRAGEDY THAT WAS FOOT & MOUTH 2001, WHERE MANY OF THE ANIMALS CULLED SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN, VACCINATION WOULD HAVE SAVED THESE ANIMALS AT A FRACTION OF THE COST OF SLAUGHTERING, THESE ARE THE MAIN REASONS WHY WE HAVE SUCH A PROBLEM WITH TB IN THIS COUNTRY – FACT
Hello, Hopefully you get this. One of the Anti cull groups have put together a collation of Pro cull comments, from Facebook and twitter, I am going to send it to my local paper, so they can see, just the kind off people we are having to deal with and whom most of the papers seem to support. I am going to attach it to this, its very unpleasant. Perhaps your local paper may be interested to see it along with the FB page kill the badgers, save the cows.
Carla
Have you thought about doing a blog on Hares, their numbers are so very low and when you think about it, when is the last time you saw a Hare, for me, a very very long time ago 😦 Check out swafh@actionforhares.org.uk, they are looking for people to do some hare surveys this autumn, a friend and I have volunteered. The hare is another farming victim, The last I read, was, that there wasn’t going to be a closed season 😦 I cannot describe in words how I feel about this government, I don’t think there are any, that could even come close to describing, my feelings.
Thank you for the idea. Yes, I’ll be happy to write an article on the brown hare as its another much loved animal from my younger days watching them in fields outside Cuffley (Herts). On a recent return trip there…surprise, surprise the Hares along with the cuckoo had all disappeared.
We did however recently see one running down the road on the approach to Parracombe In lovely Exmoor…but I agree the Hare is in dire straits and I’ll will research it and post something to help spread the knowledge.
Once again many thanks for your comments and support 🙂
Hi,
I’ve uploaded a blog post on my own personal experience and opinion on the hare situation. Hope you find it interesting & feel free to leave a comment & share the link.
https://leeconnorblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/are-we-the-mad-ones/
Thanks, Lee
I find it very interesting that all these people who are for the badger cull never put their names to the articles they write, could this mean they are afraid to back up what they say? come on lets have some facts and some hard evidence to back your claims.
Check out their vile FB page, ‘kill the badgers, Save the cows’ some names on there, but I doubt many real! As for facts or evidence, forget it, just baying for blood 😦
“Their (badgers) numbers are beginning to escalate greatly” says it all. Badgers are a protected species and cannot be culled because their numbers are rising. If Owen Paterson etc. can fool the farmers into thinking that badgers are solely responsible for the spread of bTB, they have found a loophole through the protected species issue. Payout can’t blame the farmers, who are desperate to stop their herds developing bTB but culling badgers is not the answer, in fact top scientists have said it is likely to make the problem worse.
You probably don’t feel there is a risk associated with using your name because the pro cull lobby has never threatened and intimidated the anti-cull lobby. Conversely, some within the anti-cull lobby have made horrendous threats to people, their businesses and property. Such ‘passion’ is far more a symptom of people’s love for/obsession with the badger rather than any understanding of the science associated with culling – in fact, this passion merely skews the interpretation of the science. After all, why do the Irish and EU scientists who have no such passion for or against the badger attribute the 50 per cent fall in Irish bTB slaughterings to the fact they’ve been culling badgers proactively for more than a decate, and the UK increase in slaughterings of something like 700 per cent during the same period to our failure to control the disease in badgers. The fact that Irish and UK farming systems are very similar, except for Irish cattle bTB controls being far less stringent than those in the UK, demonstrates that those who blame farmers and say badgers are being scapegoated are talking from the heart, not the heads.
Hi Nick,
Ireland has been culling badgers for much longer than a decade… it’s been going on nationally since the early to mid eighties, with, depending on whose figures you believe, between 45,000 and 97,000 badgers culled to date. The current culling programme sees around 6,000 badger snares set every night by government appointed agents.
The results? Well, it’s a complex issue… but they’re questionable at best, showing some fluctuation in BTB, and an overall downward trend in the disease (which is more likely related to improved regulation of cattle movement and husbandry than culling badgers).
From the figures I’ve seen there doesn’t appear to be a significant meaningful reduction in the incidence of BTB in the Republic during the 30-year culling programme. Certainly not one that can be directly attributed to the badger cull. Proponents argue that the badger cull is what’s maintaining BTB at a relatively consistent low level… but there’s no real evidence to support that hypothesis.
I’m sorry, but slaughtering thousands of badgers on the “off chance” it might help maintain the status quo is, quite frankly, a farce. It doesn’t make sense on paper… and it certainly doesn’t make sense on the ground… and that’s before we even get into the sticky morality of the issue.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the culling of badgers in Ireland has much more to do with spineless politicians trying to appease the powerful agricultural lobby here than it does finding a viable and sustainable solution to eradicate BTB.
I’m sorry, but from where I’m sitting that’s not a good enough reason to embark on the widespread eradication of a species. Badgers in Ireland are simply being used as an easy target, because finding a real solution to BTB is too difficult and/or costly.
Bottom line? BTB is a disease of cattle. It’s transmitted, by and large, from cattle to other cattle. Maybe I’m missing something, but surely efforts and resources for tackling the disease would be better utilised by focusing on solutions involving — you guessed it — CATTLE.
The original letter, perhaps unsurprisingly, shows a complete lack of understanding of natural ecosystems and the relationship between predator and prey populations.
The statement:
“Does Mr Connor not realise that in a natural environment all wild animals are predated upon and this controls their numbers?” is a complete fallacy.
The writer obviously hasn’t heard or hasn’t quite grasped the meaning of the term “apex predator”. An apex predator, by definition, isn’t predated upon by other predators.
Few animals in the UK historically would have preyed on badgers anyway… so lack of predators isn’t really an issue. What controls predator numbers, fundamentally, is the availability of suitable prey — which affects the species’ ability to thrive and survive.
Lets keep it really simple. All other things being equal lots of prey supports a growth in predator numbers. Increased numbers of predators reduce the availability of prey (by eating it). Reduced prey numbers lead to a decrease in predator numbers. Less predators leads to an increase in prey numbers… and so on.
It’s an elegant, self regulating system that works just fine in every natural ecosystem until people come along and start messing with the balance.
The badger diet is a mixed one too, earthworms insects, and grubs being a large part. They also eat small mammals, amphibians, reptiles as well, but being quite slow, they are opportunist predators. Some [usually shooting estates] claim corvids are responsible for songbird decline, but only as justification for killing them as they always have. I suspect the same is true with badgers, these people have always killed badgers, they just refuse to accept or are incapable of understanding the argument against.