Wildlife Column: Please don't badger the badger'¦

The badger is one of our most popular and iconic wildlife species and has made a remarkable come-back in our region. Back in the 1970s, this species was nearly extinct across South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire. But with legal protection championed through Parliament by former Rother Valley MP Peter Hardy and dedicated support from local badger groups, our largest member of the weasel family regained its position in the local fauna. Indeed, in regional towns and cities badgers have become increasingly urban too '“ and not infrequent visitors to local gardens. For badger lovers this is all good news.

However, it seems bizarre considering the above that the UK government is funding a mass slaughter of rural badgers and that this is still continuing. Last year saw a further eleven culling zones added to the existing kill areas and a result was that numbers of badgers slaughtered by increased ‘free shooting’ rose to nearly 12,000 out of a total kill of approximately 20,000.

The cost to us, the taxpayers, was around £50 million. Furthermore businesses such as developers sometimes spend many thousands of pounds in order to comply with stringent badger-protection legislation, a situation that seems at odds with the publicly-sponsored killing. The issue is that of bovine tuberculosis (or bovine TB), which is a deep-seated and distressing problem in parts of the British countryside; and expensive too. In 2016 for example, this endemic disease cost over £100 million in premature slaughter of cows. The difficulty however is that there is little or no scientific evidence to support the success of culling in order to solve the nasty problem of bovine TB among herds of dairy cattle.

Indeed, the culls may make the situation worse and it seems the main motivation is for politicians and their agents (Defra) having to be seen to take action – even if that is misguided and expensive.

The long-term solutions are probably better herd management and hygiene, careful control of badger/cattle interactions, and vaccination programmes for both cows and badgers.

The National Trust is already doing this, so why can’t the rest?

Professor Ian D. Rotherham, of Sheffield Hallam University, researcher, writer and broadcaster on wildlife and environmental issues