Badgers – slow Paice

On Wednesday, Defra announced their next slow pace towards a large amount of badger-bothering.  What they said wasn’t very much and wasn’t very clear. It seems that some time in the autumn, that’s autumn 2012, there will be a six-week trial of farmer-led badger killing in two ‘pilot’ areas of southwest England which are yet…

Shooting in the dark

This is probably the last word on this blog on badgers for a while – but who knows? Today the Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman made the long-awaited announcement on badger culling in a House of Commons more interested in what was about to happen across the road in Portcullis House where phone-hacking would be the…

Brocks and Brooks

Twitter is buzzing today with suggestions that the English Government will announce its decision on badger culling tomorrow.  We’ll see – but I’d keep your ears open at around 1230 or so if I were you (unless you are a badger in which case I’d run down a hole, put your paws over your ears…

Brooks and badgers

Thinking about next week’s Game Fair at Blenheim, I remember a few years ago sitting next to the Telegraph columnist Charlie Brooks at lunch on the Friday.  Mr Brooks had just recently written a piece slagging off the RSPB so we had a few things to chat about and the conversation roamed over the usual…

Badgers

Let’s be clear about one thing right from the start – badgers play an important role in spreading bovine tuberculosis (bTB) to cattle herds. But we’ll come back to that. This week should see an English government announcement on badger culling.  The announcement must come very soon if it is to happen before the Parliamentary…