back on the badger trail

OK back on the badger trail. 

Natural England is responsible for issuing licences to those who are shooting badgers. They are considering extending the just-finishing pilot cull, since it has not been deemed to have achieved its targets. 

If you live in England (or even if you don't, I guess) PLEASE PLEASE take a moment to email NE; address below – do use bits of my letter, below, for speed should you wish to (but obviously edit out the personal-to-me bits).

The below is self-explanatory.

BADGERS

btb@naturalengland.org.uk

Like most of the English population, I’m very distressed at the mishandling of the bTB issue. I fear another fiasco like the foot and mouth crisis (which incidentally I documented, and it has come out in book form), but this time perpetrated on a wild species which is not the proven source of bTB in any case.

We also know – you must know this – that the science doesn’t stack up (I read the preliminary report by Lord Krebs after the 9-year research programme). You will of course be familiar with the guidelines which the cull currently hasn’t met and does not meet, as detailed in the Badger Trust’s recent letter to you.

DEFRA/NFU appear to continue to move the goalposts to achieve a target which will not, in any case, fulfill any purpose, since the badger carcases are not being tested for bTB, and the situation is breaking down with predictably horrible consequences.

In addition to the ‘legal’ shooting (which has broken its boundaries and its initial stated intentions in that free-shooting has become cage-trapping and shooting, and it is clear that it is neither a) humane, nor b) being used to test the initial premise anyway – that is, that badgers are infecting cattle with bTB, which would only be assessable by testing the badger carcases), the whole thing has unleashed an ‘open season’ on badgers generally with reports of gassing, poisoning, slurry-filling of setts, and badger bodies being dumped in rivers etc.

What are you doing, other than alienating such a high percentage of the population and killing an iconic species, in issuing licences with a view to an extension?

There are volunteers trained to vaccinate badgers; it won’t cost the tax-payer anything like the bodged cull, and is likely to prove more effective in the long run – along, of course, with measures like the currently unjustifiably high levels of cull costs (£3000 PER BADGER, including police costs??) being diverted to animal husbandry issues.

PLEASE reconsider your position, which simply doesn’t appear to hold water, quite apart from the issues of blind cruelty and bigotry this seems to be sponsoring.

Yours

Roselle Angwin