15 July 2011

While debate over proposed badger culls in England and Wales rages, the Westminster government is set to make an announcement on whether a cull will go ahead in the South of the UK this week.

Although many farmers see a cull as one of the few ways to limit the spread of bovine TB, which poses a real threat to dairy farmers in particular and costs UK taxpayers millions of pounds a year, an increasing number of experts are opposing the plans and the science behind culling itself has been brought into questioned.

Most recent among the wildlife experts to publicly oppose a cull is Sir David Attenborough, who said, “At the moment TB is localised. If you kill all those badgers what happens then? Firstly those survivors will go out and carry the disease to areas that were hitherto unaffected. Other badges slowly colonise and are infected themselves. There is good scientific research available to show culling badgers can make things worse not better. “

On Wednesday (13th July) researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling at Imperial College London published findings in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, which used trials data from 1998 to 2007 and showed that a cull could have a detrimental effect, doubling nearby farms’ risk of bTB infection.

Professor Christl Donnelly, the MRC researcher who led the study, said, “These findings add to the evidence that localised reactive badger culling has a detrimental effect on tuberculosis risk for cattle. This may explain why culls in the past were ineffective at reducing the incidence of bovine TB.”

The researchers stressed that the ‘perturbation effect,’ could lead to a wider spread of bTB, whereas controls focusing on limiting the spread between cattle are already proving effective. However, a Defra spokesperson claimed that the damage caused by the effect would die down in time.

Cull could break Bern Convention

Natural England has this week challenged Defra on whether the proposed cull would breach the Bern Convention on wildlife preservation. If plans go ahead, Natural England will be responsible for awarding cull licences.

However, the agency has expressed concerns that a cull could lead to the ‘extinction’ of local badger populations in targeted areas. A spokesperson yesterday said, “We are working with Defra to make sure that any proposed cull will be conducted with appropriate safeguards to ensure there is not local extinction of badger populations and that their conservation status will not be compromised.”