When the Bad­ger Trust threat­ened Nat­ur­al Eng­land with legal action for extend­ing the bad­ger cull, Nat­ur­al Eng­land said the the claim was based on a fun­da­men­tal con­fu­sion, but can you blame them, when those involved in the cull have been so, well, con­fus­ing. Between the secre­cy, the lying, u‑turns and even the blam­ing of the bad­gers for not co-oper­at­ing with being shot. Schnews attempts to digest the bad­ger farce a lit­tle…

TRIGGER WARNING

The the­o­ry is that killing bad­gers will reduce TB in cat­tle by 16%. Pre­vi­ous tri­als used traps to catch the ani­mals before shoot­ing them, but this was vetoed as too expen­sive and too vul­ner­a­ble to dis­rup­tion. This time, they’ve gone for the econ­o­my ver­sion where the bad­gers are shot while free run­ning. Vac­ci­nat­ing bad­gers has been dis­missed by gov­ern­ment as too expen­sive though sev­er­al inde­pen­dent groups are vac­ci­nat­ing. The whole pol­i­cy ignores the real prob­lems around bovine TB, which you can read about here (SchNEWS 836)

One of the impor­tant cri­te­ria of the cull is that at least 70% of the bad­gers in a giv­en area must be killed, to min­imise the num­ber of dis­turbed sur­vivors roam­ing about spread­ing the dis­ease fur­ther afield — the so-called ‘per­tur­ba­tion’ effect.

The main prob­lem with this was pret­ty clear from the begin­ning; nobody knows how many bad­gers there in the first place. Pre­vi­ous data showed more about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of bad­ger enthu­si­asts than bad­gers.

In 2012, Defra post­poned the cull, using the excuse that the bad­ger pop­u­la­tion was far high­er than expect­ed. when their pop­u­la­tion esti­mate shot up sud­den­ly. This year, when half way through the process it was clear the cull was floun­der­ing, they revised the pop­u­la­tion esti­mate down – the famous ‘pesky bad­gers moved my goal­posts’ moment. In a sta­tis­ti­cal manip­u­la­tion wor­thy of any­body’s Five Year Plan, Pater­son­’s Polit­buro announced that 940 bad­gers amount­ed to 65% of the pop­u­la­tion (Unmo­lest­ed pop­u­la­tions of bad­gers have shown no sign of these wild oscil­la­tions in num­bers)

Stal­in Pater­son has been caught out fib­bing about more thasn the num­bers though. On 10th Octo­ber he stat­ed in par­lia­ment that ‘…some of the ani­mals we have shot have been des­per­ate­ly sick-in the final stages of dis­ease…’ Mark Jones vet and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Humane Soci­ety Inter­na­tion­al said: “As a vet I find Mr Paterson’s claim that bad­gers shot in the pilot culls were ‘des­per­ate­ly sick’ high­ly sus­pi­cious. I know of no evi­dence to back this up, indeed all the avail­able data sug­gests that even where bovine TB is rife among cat­tle, only a tiny pro­por­tion of bad­gers will be suf­fer­ing any symp­toms of the dis­ease. The fig­ure is per­haps as low as one in a hun­dred. As Mr Pater­son has refused to have the bad­ger car­cas­es test­ed for TB, he can­not pos­si­bly have any sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly cred­i­ble data to sup­port his asser­tion and nobody will be per­mit­ted to chal­lenge his claim because DEFRA is hav­ing all the bod­ies incin­er­at­ed”

In Som­er­set they have killed 940 bad­gers, which with the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion esti­mate of 1450 is 65%. But at one point they said the pop­u­la­tion was 4300, which meant they had to kill 3000 bad­gers. If we’ve got the maths right, 940 is only 22% of 4300. At the end of the orig­i­nal Glouces­ter peri­od, only 30% had been killed.

The Som­er­set cull has now stopped but the Glouces­ter cull zone has been grant­ed an eight week exten­sion.

Action against the cull

The sus­tained lev­el of resis­tance to the cull has been impres­sive, nev­er leav­ing shoot­ers to oper­ate in peace. Hun­dreds of peo­ple have been spend­ing their nights in the cull zones, often trav­el­ling long dis­tances. A sin­gle bad­ger killed is clear­ly one too many but the deter­mined work of so many has helped make the cull a fail­ure. What­ev­er the gov­ern­ment spin says, shoot­ers on the ground have been admit­ting there was ‘no point even turn­ing up most nights.’

SchNEWS spoke to a reg­u­lar trav­eller to the cull zones “One of the best things about the cull is how it has brought togeth­er such a diver­si­ty of peo­ple togeth­er for the sake of the bad­gers. There has been good co-oper­a­tion and accep­tance of dif­fer­ent tac­tics with those going on legal night patrols on foot­paths work­ing along­side those direct­ly sab­o­tag­ing the shoot­ers with noise and torch­es. Mean­while, the Bad­ger Trust have been fight­ing the cull in court and the likes of Bri­an May have been doing the media bit. There have been live­ly pro bad­ger march­es in towns all round the coun­try. Hunt sabo­teurs have report­ed an increase in sup­port since sab­o­tag­ing the cull.Those sorts of alliances and rad­i­cal­is­ing of the ani­mal lov­ing mid­dle eng­land could be a bit of an own goal for the shoot­ing lob­by.”

Info for Action

Polic­ing tac­tics in the two cull zones have been very dif­fer­ent but they haven’t in either case suceed­ed in dis­rupt­ing the sab­o­tage. Glouces­ter­shire polic­ing has been a lot more pro-active, more arrests and harass­ment of activists, than in Som­er­set.

“In terms of tac­tics, the hard­est part has gen­er­al­ly been find­ing the shoot­ers. Good sett sur­vey­ing before­hand, record­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing sight­ings and sheer num­bers of peo­ple out look­ing have all proved help­ful. The groups walk­ing foot­paths with torch­es have made cer­tain areas impos­si­ble to shoot in and noisy dis­rup­tion of shoots have stopped them as well. When cage traps are used you can squash them or cut them open with bolt cut­ters. The cull is still going on in Glouces­ter­shire so get on down there to prac­tice your trap destruc­tion skills.”

Next

The licences for these two cull zones last for four years, but oth­er pilot culls may be start­ed next year. Top of the list is Dorset. Culling has to stop over the win­ter but may start again in the spring.

An ‘inde­pen­dent pan­el’ is sup­posed to be eval­u­at­ing the evi­dence to decide if the tri­als are suc­cess­ful. Indi­ca­tions sug­gest that Owen ‘shoot the buz­zards’ Pater­son will not accept any thing but approval of the cull.