Badger Cull

[AB Editor]

 

This poll is closed.

Is The Proposed Badger Cull Necessary?

• No. It is not necessary. - 159 votes
• 70%
• Yes, they must be culled. - 69 votes
• 30%

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Stats until: 22:14 Sat 26th Apr 2025 (Refreshed every 5 minutes)

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[Kiki-frog]

Totally unnecessary. A smokescreen by Defra because they didn't research a vaccine for cattle soon enough. And also because many farmers are still peed off with them with their handling of foot and mouth in 2001

[chaptazbru]

ditto

[factor-fiction]

Does the poll refer to the trial or the potential rolling out of a wider cull, or both?

[wildwood]

If we don't learn to live in harmony with Nature soon, we'll be the only ones left, plus the ants.

[tamborine]

AND we are told to cull grey squirrels in favour of the reds. I've got greys here as did my grandad. We saw reds when visiting Norway in 1950s; reds are indiginous to the Nords, greys to UK.

[LoftyLottie]

Agree Wildwood. Man is the biggest threat to this planet.

[woofgang]

tambo, sadly greys are not indigenous
http://www.woodlands....rel-arrive-in-the-uk/

but culling them wont help either.

[LoftyLottie]

I think that it is quite natural for species to cross territories whether it be intended or not. Woofie is correct about red squirrels Tambo. I agree that culling is a total waste of time, and also totally immoral in my opinion. Let nature take it's course. Left alone it levels itself out. Man insists on fighting nature but nature will ultimately win hopefully.

[ordbrae]

It is not necessary to coll Badgers.
The badgers are merely scapegoats in the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis.

[mdenning]

I will not just stand by and watch these beautiful creatures culled

[welshlibranr]

me neither mdenning!...........

[KirkUSA]

City dwellers that have only seen badgers on a page or screen should realize they do not have an informed opinion. Just arrogance to assume you do.

[Fordyce]

It is feasible to inoculate badgers & there is a suitable vaccine available so why are the powers that be dragging their feet over this? It needs a bit of organisation! Gamekeepers, farmers etc in all badger inhabited areas may be sceptical, but surely it is worth the effort to try & reduce the number of cattle infected by tb. Stop agonising over it & get on & DO IT.

[emmie]

kirkusa, amazing that you can make such a sweeping statement, how many city dwellers on AB do you reckon, seeing it's anonymous for the most part.

[Cattlegate]

"let's kill all the badgers and see if that works", doesn't seem very scientific to me.

[Graham-W]

It takes about 18 months for a badger to die of TB. It's a long and painful disease for the badger. A sick badger is cast out of the set (having already infected others) and must live alone, without family, until it eventually dies.
I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps the vaccination route, which would be a long, expensive and less secure route.
Culling gives a short term result, but badgers from the surrounding un-culled areas would soon move back into the area defeating the object.
Like I said, I have no real answers other than the badgers will not win in the long term.

[shoota]

The Irish conclusion:
Abstract

We examined the effect of varying levels of badger population control on the prevalence of Mycobacterium bovis infection in badgers in four counties of Ireland. In the ‘Removal’ and ‘Buffer’ areas, proactive culling was conducted to substantially reduce and subsequently maintain badger populations at a low level for five years. In the ‘Reference’ areas, localised reactive culling was conducted in association with herd breakdowns. The infection status of badgers was determined using bacteriology. A total of 2696 badgers were recruited into the study, and 19.0% were found to be infected with M. bovis. The two population control strategies had differing effects on the subsequent prevalence of tuberculosis in badger populations. Proactive culling led to a long term decrease in the prevalence of tuberculosis in the re-emergent populations. Although there was an overall decline in the disease prevalence, no consistent trend in disease prevalence as a result of reactive culling was observed.

That is from here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034528807002767