The Wildlife Trust/Simon King e-petition to stop the Badger cull rather than expand it into new areas has a month to run and is around 18,000 signatures away from the magic 100,000. Now, as we know, 100,000 signatures does not mean that government will do anything – but, as we also know, it does mean…
Category: Badgers
Two Christmas adverts #BusterTheBoxer
It’s only early November but hoh! hoh! hoh! it’s time for Christmas adverts. The first one (#BusterTheBoxer), from multi-million pound business John Lewis (@JohnLewisRetail, not the poor chap @JohnLewis) has upset some ‘real country people’ but is putting a smile on the faces of many more people across the country. Have you seen it? Deliberately…
Sunday book review – Badgered to Death by Dominic Dyer
I enjoyed reading this book and I strongly recommend it to you. This is a powerful and stimulating read and it’s bang up to date with the important issue it discusses. It is written by a passionate insider with years of experience. The narrative is pacey and exciting. This book arrived with me on Thursday…
What nonsense from Defra
‘Bovine TB eradication strategy delivering results‘ was the headline of a press release issued by Defra on Thursday last week. Defra went on ‘The comprehensive strategy to eradicate bovine TB in England is delivering results with more than half the country on track to be officially free of the disease by the end of this…
Lord Krebs on Badgers
My old boss, Prof Lord Krebs, was on Farming Today (8 mins in) being interviewed by Anna Hill on Wednesday morning. Lord Krebs provided a masterclass in sticking to the facts, despite some niggling questions from Ms Hill, and getting the message across very clearly. The message was that the ‘too-early-to-tell-really-but-the-figures-are-out-there’ results from the Badger…
Badger consultation
The government is consulting on relaxing the criteria that need to be met for farmers to get licenses to kill badgers in trial areas. This government is dead keen to give the NFU and farmers greater ‘flexibility’ in killing badgers with the supposed aim of reducing bTB. We need to reduce bTB. We may need…
Vaccination of badgers
The good thing about this strange statement from the NFU is that they are wanting more vaccination of badgers. One of the strange things is that they seem to think that it is the job of wildlife charities to provide it rather than their own industry or government. This represents, it appears, quite a lurch…
Badgers and bTB
Here’s a head-ache for the new NFU President and his team, and also for Owen Paterson; one man in the first few days of his job and the other, if rumours are to be believed, in the last few weeks of his. An Independent Expert Panel was appointed by Defra to help evaluate the effectiveness,…
Badgers, Syria and democracy
I read an interesting blog last week by Matthew Taylor about whether ‘doing something’ is seen as better or worse than ‘not doing anything’. I am emotionally a ‘let’s do something’ type of person. If I see a mess I’d rather be doing something about it than not doing something – sometimes, even if I’m…
It’s about TB
After the decision to delay the badger-cull pilot study it might be that badgers are breathing a sigh of relief. Except they won’t be because we don’t have in place effective measures to limit the spread of bovine TB in badgers and cattle and from one to the other (both ways!). One huge problem with…