BADGER CULL A WASTE OF TIME

Robert Tuck writes in today’s (17th May 2013) Bournemouth Echo (and Dorset Echo) in support of my letter from last week.

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/yoursay/letterstotheeditor/10426821.Money_wasted_over_cull_issue/

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/yousay/yourletters/10427015.Badger_cull_a_waste_of_time/

 

Lee Connor (Letters, May 10) is absolutely correct about the badger cull.

This government has spent and wasted £50million of taxpayers’ money on research, the findings of which they are now choosing to deliberately ignore in order to curry favour with their farming supporters, although it has to be noted that a few farmers are not in favour of this cull. Much destruction and cruelty will be caused which could be avoided by a systematic vaccination programme, which is already being trialled in some areas by those who are trying desperately to save the badgers.

DORSET’S KILLING FIELDS

From the letters page of the Bournemouth Echo (10th May 2013)

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/yoursay/letterstotheeditor/10411809.Badgers_cull_is_a_big_mistake/

I would like to inform wildlife-loving readers of the Daily Echo of the government’s plans to use Dorset as a ‘reserve’ in their planned cull of badgers.

Many may have believed the plans to slaughter thousands of badgers had been consigned to the scrapheap but this isn’t the case; it is set to begin in earnest in June, to be trialled in Gloucestershire and Somerset.

THYLACINES & BADGERS: MANKIND’S SCAPEGOATS?

Written in response to the forthcoming badger cull in the UK (20th April 2013)

On September 12^th 1803 the British settled in Tasmania. Over the following decades as more and more settlers arrived, fears of the strange beasts that inhabited their exotic new home quickly spread.

Tall tales, hysteria and superstition saw the thylacine – or Tasmanian tiger – the island’s largest predator, branded as something to be exterminated.

By 1820, Hobart was the second largest town in Australia and shifted its industry away from whaling towards farming.

As the new farmers rapidly cleared and altered the natural environment they viewed the indigenous creatures (and people) merely as an inconvenience to be swept away.