The King Report on Badger Culling

[andygates]

The King report is here: http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/tb/pdf/badgersreport-king.pdf

Basically, it's an attempt at a stopgap. Kill enough badgers to decrease the "reservoir of infection" and maintain the cull until something better (like badger vaccination or -gasp- better farming practices) comes along. It won't be a one-off and to work it would need to be repeated year after year in cull areas.

The smart, long-term approach would be to tag badgers now, get a really good idea of their movements and meanwhile expedite vaccine development. Then routinely vaccinate until the "reservoir of infection" is emptied. This would be cheaper in the long term, it would be massively more acceptable to the public, and it would be more effective.

I hope we can keep the anger level high enough that the politicians see that this is a vote-loser. That might steer them in the right direction. Very unpopular cull programmes would probably result in direct-action badger defense protests and a whole wave of "swampy versus the farmers" protest, which would be less desirable but an understandable reaction.

Comments

[simoneck.livejournal.com]

Heard some interviews around this.
Apparently it's a very large area now, so you are talking 200,000 badgers.

Also, when you kill badgers, other badgers start to move much more widely, since there is territory for them to move into. Thus you get much more movement when you do the culling.

Can't see it makes any sense at all.


Though I've never heard any details on what impact TB has on badgers. Is it just a bit inconvenient, or do they die a horrible and lingering death. ie is there a good reason to cull badgers to stop other badgers getting TB. If this was the case, I'm guessing it would be being used as an argument.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

They die a horrible and lingering death. I'd support measures which tried to reduce the rate of infection in the wild population, but these don't - they just seem to reduce the numbers, and hope that will do the job. As soon as the population stops being suppressed, we'll be back to square one. And in the meantime, badgers and lady badgers will still hook up: they'll just have to travel further to do it.

The wildlife-welfare card has not been played as far as I can see. Instead it's the "lovely but lethal! Look, they're just huge plague rats!" angle at the mo.