Badger populations are once again at threat of being culled in an attempt to tackle the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle. Documents published on 27 May show an additional 10 new areas for this year, in addition to the 10 areas that will continue from previous years.
These 20 areas are part of a supplementary culling program. Once an initial four-year intensive culling license has been completed, an additional five-year license can be applied for. Initial culling licenses run from September to November, while additional licenses can run from June to January. Licenses approved for this year’s supplementary culling could see up to 13,881 badgers killed.
With near year-round culling, the plight of badgers becomes more severe with every new license issued. This government-led persecution of one of Britain’s most iconic mammals, however, is not new.
A bleak history
In 1973, following an emergence of bTB in Gloucestershire and Cornwall two years earlier, the government sanctioned the gassing of badgers. Though no official data was recorded of how many badgers were victim to hydrogen cyanide, Dr Richard Meyer estimates in his book The Fate of The Badger that it is likely to be somewhere around 15,000 until the use of gas was stopped in 1981. Though gassing was officially abandoned, culling continued.
Following Lord Zuckermans’s report in 1980, which continued to blame the spread of bTB in cattle on badgers, culling continued in 1982 under a clean ring policy until Professor Dunnet’s report in 1986. The report found that incidence of bTB had reduced irrelevant to whether culling had taken place and that the clean ring policy was unsustainable.
A new interim strategy was implemented, which didn’t stop the culling of badgers but involved farmers taking biosecurity measures to reduce cattle-to-badger contact. The strategy was initially intended to be short term but continued for nine years due to a focus on ‘mad cow disease’.
In 1997 Professor Krebs was commissioned by the government to carry out the third review of bTB. The report stated badgers were a “significant source of infection in cattle” but concluded that the evidence was “indirect” as it consisted of correlations and not cause and effect. As this report was inconclusive, the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) was initiated to investigate the ways in which bTB spreads between cattle, badgers and other wildlife and took place between 1998 and 2007. The Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB (ISG), who oversaw the trial, published their results and concluded “badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain”.
Continuing to fail badgers
The results of the RBCT, concluded by the peer-reviewed report by ISG, caused problems for those in favour of badger culling. Sir David King, chief scientific adviser of the time, counteracted the ISG in a report that he produced in less than six weeks. His position was clear: “removal of badgers is the best option available at the moment to reduce the reservoir of infection in wildlife”.
Criticisms of King were published by scientific journal Nature and voiced concern that “it is likely that political factors will ultimately overrule scientific ones when a government takes a decision in a contentious field”. This would become a reality.
The following year, Hilary Benn, then-secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, announced his rejection for culling and highlighted other measures that could be taken. They included a £20m investment into an effective vaccine for cattle and badgers. Frustrated with the prospect of farmers and landowners taking reasonability for their own biosecurity measures, the National Farmers Union (NFU) response was to pull on the heartstrings of the public by stating that a decision to not cull badgers “will be a devastating blow for farmers and their families that are really being blighted, devastated and destroyed”. Less than a week later, the NFU launched a propaganda campaign. It published provocative full-page adverts in regional press displaying an image of a slaughtered cow with the headline: ‘She needed indecision on TB like she needed a hole in the head’.
The culling of badgers continued to be pushed. In 2010, the Welsh rural affairs minister Elin Jones proposed culling to take place in parts of Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion as part of her commitment to “tackling the bovine TB crisis”. This was subject to a three-month consultation but was evidently abandoned as, according to a research report:
the reductions in cattle TB incidence achieved by repeated badger culling were not sustained in the long term and did not offset the financial costs of culling
As an alternative, a vaccination program was introduced a year later.
Pilot badger culling
Despite continued scepticism, the secretary of state for DEFRA, Caroline Spelman, announced in parliament the government’s plan to cull badgers. West Gloucestershire and West Somerset were later confirmed to be selected as part of the pilot scheme but was delayed in an “embarrassing U-turn" by environment secretary Owen Paterson until 2013.
The six-week cull went ahead but was met with direct opposition from hunt saboteurs and other anti-cull activists. Gloucestershire Police, in preparation for policing the cull, confirmed this was a “big concern” and admitted that they would “bend the law” to enable peaceful protest. Despite a High Court imposing an injunction on protesting and entering private property, anti-cull activists claimed their efforts were successful. This claim was amplified by a failure to meet the required quota.
Both Somerset and Gloucestershire were given targets of culling at least 70 percent of their badger populations in six weeks. The results didn’t reach this target, with Somerset reaching 48% and Gloucestershire 39% according to a report carried out by the Independent Expert Panel. It concluded that of the 1,573 badgers culled, up to 22% could have taken up to five minutes to die in pain.
In a desperate attempt to meet the minimum quota, DEFRA minister Owen Paterson controversially extended the pilot cull by three weeks. But it was abandoned just two weeks in. Somerset fell short of the minimum target by 5% while Gloucestershire was short by 30%, according to a House of Commons document.
The following year, Paterson announced in Parliament that pilots would continue in the same areas. Similar to the previous year, each zone had their own quota for a minimum and maximum number of badgers to cull. In Somerset, the minimum was 316 with a maximum of 785, but at 341 the final number barely fit within the quota. And in Gloucestershire, the final number of 241 fell considerably short of the 615 minimum. In DEFRA’s report, it suggested that these low numbers were due to the efforts anti-cull activists, especially in Gloucestershire which had “widespread interference”.
It was reported that both pilot culls cost UK taxpayers £9.8m, the equivalent of over £5,200 per badger killed.
The big rollout
Before the election in 2015, secretary of state for DEFRA, Elizabeth Truss, confirmed her position on badgers at an NFU conference, stating:
we will not let up, whatever complaints we get from protesters groups. We are in it for the long haul and we will not walk away.
Following the election of a Conservative government, documents confirmed that culling in Gloucestershire and Somerset would continue and that an additional four-year license was issued for Dorset.
For the first since culling begun in 2013, the minimum quota was met in each zone and 1,467 badgers had been killed, according to DEFRA document. In the House of Commons, Truss stated that as the zones “all hit their targets” she was considering extending the programme. Her ‘consideration’ was an understatement.
2016 saw an additional seven new areas where badger culling was to take place, expanding to Herefordshire, Cornwall and Devon. In the years that followed, the expansion of the badger cull continued. By 2020, licences issued by the government totalled 43 zones, not including supplementary zones. In 2020, 38,642 were killed according to official figures.
The Hunt Saboteurs Association concluded that the total number of badgers culled between 2013 and 2020 was 140,991, not including supplementary zones.
Means on no end
For anti-cull activists and campaigners, conservationists, wildlife enthusiasts and many others who oppose the culling of badgers, these numbers are bleak. In early 2021, it was reported that the government would stop issuing culling licenses after 2022. The reality is that new licenses will continue until the end of 2025.
Evidence presented in Dr Meyer’s book The Fate of The Badger gives a comprehensive history of the scientific analysis of bTB and its relationship to wildlife and cattle and makes clear that culling is not a solution. The lack of effectiveness in culling badgers is also made clear in Professor Dunnet’s report, Professor Krebs’s report, the ISG review of the RBCT and even within the 2013 and 2014 reports of the pilot culls.
It is no surprise that there are strong opinions that the badger cull is more political than it is scientific. With more research being published linking bTB to intensive cattle farming, and recent documentation published by DEFRA confirming that the prevalence of bTB in cattle herds has not decreased in the last 12 months, it makes increasing sense to rethink farming practices.
Less intensive farming, restricting cattle movement and implementing more effective biosecurity measures including testing and tracing systems, vaccines and quick reactive measures to outbreaks is an appropriate response to the issue of bTB in cattle. Until that happens, there will be many more bleak years of badger persecution.
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The Badger Trust
Another bleak year for badgers begins
By any thinking the continued culling of badgers is obscene and wrong on any level. It seems to be a protected species is tantamount to having a target on your back.
They need every bit of help anyone can give . Boots on the ground are effective get involved in any way you can