Badger cull rumours

[stripee]

Originally Posted by Country lover

It will be interesting to see a map of the cull area when it's finalised to see what geographical barriers there are to the spread of TB outside the cull area.

Unfortunately bTB requires a multi-faceted approach, including badger culling but clearly the ERFA report went completely over the heads of the Welsh Assembly.

If anyone is interested I did a lot of research into the subject of badgers and bovine TB last year, although it's not an expert opinion I wrote a series of blog posts .. would be interested in your views from the wildlife/badger perspective:

Bovine TB and Badgers - the debate grinds on - part 1

Bovine TB and Badgers - the debate grinds on - part 2

Bovine TB and Badgers - the debate grinds on - part 3

Bovine TB and Badgers - the debate grinds on - conclusion

Countrylover, I will read your blog posts with interest.
I am concerned that the Welsh Assembly by chosing North Pembrokeshire don't have the necessary geographic boundaries that are required to carry out a David King style cull.
I can't see anywhere, unless they do the area from St Davids to Fishguard. They can use the Preseli mountains but these are a small range of hills. There is the A40 but this also leaves one side for badgers to migrate out of. If they use the Teifi they will have to go right across Carmarthenshire as well.
Badgers can cross quite large streams on fallen trees, and the A roads in the area are fairly quiet at night. So I just can't think where they will come up with. There was an intensive treatment area below the Preselis a couple of years back, the report came out recently criticising biosecurity on the farms and knowledge re bovine TB. (The pdf can be found with Google search!)This was a 100 km squared and followed minor streams and roads.
Cynically I would say that Plaid Cymru are more concerned about having a first minister and devolution and that it is a expedient political decision. With biosecurity measures already being implemented it will be hard to isolate the badger factor in improving bovine TB numbers.

[stripee]

Originally Posted by Digit

I think you have missed my point my friend. I don't doubt that farmers locally kill Badgers, as they do Foxes, Rooks and Crows.
My point was that the road kills are likely to be just that, road kills, rather than farmers putting a body into the back of the Land Rover then depositing the corpse on the highway.

Roy.

Point taken Roy. But the badger corpses found over the last year shot were thought to be dumped by farmers from what I read and found a distance from their farms to avoid detection/prosecution. Others may well be road casualties of course

[Digit]

One thing about shooting locally that astonished me was a group shooting Rooks, they were convinced they were Crows, now come on!

Roy.

[Country lover]

Originally Posted by stripee

Point taken Roy. But the badger corpses found over the last year shot were thought to be dumped by farmers from what I read and found a distance from their farms to avoid detection/prosecution. Others may well be road casualties of course

Farmers tend not to be the ones that shoot the badgers, they allow hunters onto their land at night and tell them to make sure corpses are removed to avoid prosecution.

That said I know a number of farmers that are happy to have badger setts on their land and in fact work hard to protect the setts .. although we are not in a high TB area and I imagine if we were attitudes would change very quickly.

[Country lover]

Originally Posted by stripee

Cynically I would say that Plaid Cymru are more concerned about having a first minister and devolution and that it is a expedient political decision. With biosecurity measures already being implemented it will be hard to isolate the badger factor in improving bovine TB numbers.

While I'm sure there is political motivations behind this announcement I am not yet as cynical as you The cull will cost about £27 million and the cost of culling and compensation will be about £30 million this year alone .. the disease has to be tackled head on I'm afraid (from all sides) it is growing too rapidly but of course without adequate geographic barriers the problem and costs may simply be moved to another area.

[stripee]

The "cynical" does not just apply to badger culling, country lover!
I will read your blogs with interest, and will continue to post any news, but I have already said just about everything I want to say on previous threads on WAB and don't have the time to post anything more for now, so will leave the debate for others to take up if they wish!

[Nightranger]

Originally Posted by Digit

There has been a massive rise in Badger numbers in the Cardigan area in recent years and they represent the majority of road kills locally. They can be difficult to see at night and many of the side roads have high banks and no grass verges so that the animals appear in front of you with little or no warning.
No motorist in his right mind runs over a Badger, the damage to the vehicle can be considerable. The corpses are normally removed by our council and there have been no reports to suggest that the animals died from other than vehicular impacts.

Roy.

Hi Roy,

I admit that I have never checked and I never see badgers here in Lancashire anyway. I also accept that some (questionable proportion because I am sure this is never regularly checked in some parts of the country) will be genuine traffic victims. However, my experience in Bedfordshire was that road kills seemed entirely proportianate to the local population of badgers travelling across a derestricted road with no lighting. Yet, the road kills in certain parts of the country are alarmingly high or rather, dense numbers along short stretches, which tends to support what I was told by the person from the badger society. My main point (whilst admittedly, cynically put) was that despite badger protection, there has been an awful lot of illegal persecution over the years. I just find it depressing that after all this, there are politicians prepared to pay lip service to people who cannot accept that Bovine TB is a two-way situation. As we saw during the FMD crisis. some unscrupulous farmers are not above moving stock around the country against restrictions and this is the gist of the Bovine TB problem, particularly in the way it is spread. There is some outward spread from local areas that could be attributed to badgers but many flare-ups occur further from known spots than badgers are likely to travel.

In principle, I am not against a selective cull if it controls local spread but all thre programmes I have seen so far are not aimed at this kind of control. Worse still, the UK is still pretty poor at controlling infected livestock movements, which is partly why EU member states ban imports of our meat every time something goes wrong.*

* There is an element of nationalism too but we have to admit, we make it easy for the French etc to ban our meat.

[Digit]

I am 68 yrs old Nightranger and very cynical about politicians I'm afraid. DEFRA have turned down culling and vaccination in the past for reasons that they have stated, now the only thing that seems to have changed is the cost of compensation to farmers!
The cattle could be vaccinated against TB, but I seem to recall that the government says no, to do with the country's TB status I believe.
But that would still leave the Badgers with it.
As I have said earlier, to me it's an animal welfare matter, both Badgers and cattle!
Dodging decisions doesn't make them easier or less correct, by dodging this for so long they have simply increased the costs and the death toll, same with Deer culling.

Roy.