www.badgerland.co.uk
News about Badgers in the UK
Home Shop Animals Pictures Help Seeing Groups Education News Search Books
Badgerland External 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996
 
Finding Badgers?
Buy our Finding Evidence of Badgers booklet

Badger cull damaged by protesters' disruption and farmers' impatience

Do you want to learn or teach people about badgers?

Guardian - Saturday July 15, 2000

by James Meikle

The government's attempts to establish whether badgers are the prime cause for the rising incidence of TB in cattle are under increasing threat from activists seeking to wreck a limited cull of the wildlife.

Meanwhile farmers angry at what they see as government inaction to stop the spread of the disease outside the culling zones in the west country are boasting that they are shooting animals illegally.

Evidence from the badger cull will take at least another two years to collect. It could be 2004 before ministers decide a national policy for eradicating bovine TB, which is also prevalent in the sharply rising badger population.

But activists are destroying traps, picketing farms, damaging Ministry of Agriculture property and allegedly threatening officials, farmers and landowners in attempts to halt the experiment. Police wildlife officers say they have been taken aback by the number of farmers who claim they have broken British and international law by killing badgers, knowing they could not be held to account because of a lack of independent evidence......

The cull is costing £7m a year, with other research costing £4m, cattle TB testing £12m and compensation for the well over 6,000 cattle that have had to be destroyed another £5m. She denied any suggestion the government was neglecting other ways of combating TB, including vaccines for cattle or wildlife, better management of farms, and improved cattle breeding. There were likely to be several causes for the big increase in bovine TB......

For the full text of this article click the following link:

Michael Clark book
This is a superb book about badgers by Michael Clark. His immense knowledge of badgers really shines through. Click here to buy:
2017 edition or 2010 edition
External News

We have provided links to stories from external news organisations so you can follow the media interest in badgers, and see who writes on the subject. We do not endorse external authors.