Badger Culling

Latin Name:

Meles Meles. They are in the class Mustelids and are related to ferrets, otters, stoats, polecats and weasels.

Numbers:

Badgers are widespread across Ireland and Britain as well as Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Africa. Roughly 250,000-310,000 individuals live in Britain, in around 80,000 family groups.

The species has live in Britain for over 250,000 years.

They are a protected species in Britain and cannot be kept as pets, trapped, persecuted or deliberately killed. Using dogs to fight badgers or badger baiting has been illegal since 1835.

Habits:

They are nocturnal and rarely emerge during daylight hours, except perhaps to get a drink. Very sociable animals, they live in family groups of 2-23, but usually in groups of 6 adults. They scent each other so that each family group has a particular smell, allowing them to quickly determine who is friend or stranger.

They live in setts, a system of tunnels dug into hillsides or hedgerows. They usually have a main sett with other holes they occasionally use scattered around their territory. Their territory can be as small as 30ha up to 150ha (territories this large are often found in the Scottish Highlands). They dig, and use, shallow pits as latrines.

Appearance:

Grey body, black and white striped face and black fur on its legs. Body length is roughly 30 inches (750 mm) with a 6 inch (150 mm) tail and their body weight varies between spring at 8-9 kg and autumn at 11-12 kg, with males weighing more than females.

Life span:

One out of three badger cubs will die during their first year. In the wild only 35% will live to be two years old and less than 20% will survive to the age of seven. The oldest on record, was a captive female who lived to be 19.5 years old.

Mating:

Mating usually occurs between Feb. and May, with implantation often delayed until early spring. Normally only one female within the badger social group, breeds and she will have 2-3 cubs, which are generally born in February. Although born hairless and blind, cubs will appear outside the sett at about 8 weeks of age and will be foraging for themselves by late summer.

Food:

Badgers, like foxes live on earthworms, slugs and snail but they also like peanuts and fruit and vegetables. In one evening, a badger can eat over 200 earthworms.

Although you may never see badgers, if you live near a sett, putting out scraps could bring them into your garden. Being creatures of habit, badgers will get used to a reliable source of food and may well change their foraging habits. They use particular routes regularly and will usually come around the same time every night.

If you want to put food out for badgers, put out only a little every so often. If food is put out every day, it will discourage them from finding food for themselves. Do not put out so much that they will become too fat or overly reliant on handouts. During dry or hot weather, leave water out for them as well.

While they greatly appreciate some bread spread with peanut butter, DO NOT give them milk or meat scraps. They love sweet stuff like cakes and biscuits, but give them these only occasionally. Put some potatoes or fruits outside your vegetable patch as they will dig up your garden in search of the root vegetables they love.

If you do feed them, leave the food in a quiet area where they won't be disturbed and away from pond edges which can be dangerous for them.

Badgers play a part in many myths and legends particularly amongst the indigenous people of North America.
Myth - badgers eat their own cubs. Only rarely will a new male kill the cubs of his rival.
Myth - badgers are full of fleas and ticks. They carefully groom each other and they regularly change their bedding to reduce the pests they have to live with.
Myth - Badgers will attack children. There are no documented cases of badgers attacking children.
Myth - If a badger crossed behind you it was considered good luck in Medieval times. However it was bad luck to have one pass in front of you and it was very bad luck to have one stop and scratch the earth in front of you, as this meant you would soon die.
Myth - You can catch TB from badgers. There are no documented cases of humans catching TB from badgers, although there is still considerable debate about TB infections passing between badgers and cows.

Strange facts:

The badgers of Europe and Asia have been known to scent trees and fence posts by doing hand stands. They manage, in this way, to leave their scent as much as 30.5-40.5 cm (12-16 inches) up the tree. To ensure everyone knows their territorial boundaries, they rub their scent glands (located in the anus) along trees and posts.

For its size, the badger is the strongest and the fastest digging animal on earth. A case in point, a badger in the American Midwest was seen digging a hole in a parking lot's asphalt surface and in less than two minutes he had disappeared completely.

Badgers are social animals with other species as well as their own and sometimes share their sett or burrow with foxes in Britain, with coyote in the U.S. and on the island of Palawan in the Philippines, the badger may have a porcupine as a room mate!

As of the 23rd of March 2011, the Welsh Assembly and its Minister for Rural Affairs sentenced the badger to death in certain areas of Wales.

On that day, the Welsh Assembly voted down the motion that would have annulled the Badger (Control Area) (Wales) Order 2011. Despite the efforts of so many people including Dr. Brian May, an astrophysicist and the lead guitarist for the rock group Queen, there seems to be no way to stop the cull. However, a very disappointed Badger Trust is discussing with their barristers what further legal action can be taken.

It seems that the 13,431 responses submitted by the public, a High Court case won 8 months ago by the Badger Trust stopping the cull and scientific evidence showing steadily falling incidences of bTB in Dyfed (including the Intensive Action Area), are not enough to keep Elin Jones and the Welsh Assembly from going ahead with the badger cull.

Control measures brought into the management of cattle farming has actually shown a significant (45%) decrease in the incidence of bovine TB in Dyfed, including in the Intensive Action Area (the area in which the badgers are destined to be culled).

Dr Brian May appeared before the Assembly and told its members that "everyone who has studied the evidence knows it [culling] won't work and that the only way to eliminate the disease is through better screening and movement controls." He went on to say, "For the past two years, the incidence of bTB has fallen dramatically following the tightening of cattle-based controls within the farming industry."

Steve Clark of the Badger Trust asked Welsh AMs to give the "rigorous and comprehensive cattle-based measures more time to work". In an open letter to the Assembly, the Badger Trust said that "Culling badgers is difficult, unpopular and expensive. At best, cost savings will be marginal."

So why won't the Assembly and Ms Jones listen?

Perhaps we ought to follow the call from the badgers themselves for a cull of Welsh Assembly members!

Complain About Badger Culling To:
Elin Jones
Plaid Cymru Ceredigion
32 Pier Street
Aberystwyth
SY23 2LN
+44 (0)1970 617 492
elin@elinjones.com
www.facebook.com/ElinJonesPlaid
Twitter: @ElinJonesPlaid

Rock On Brian

This is the link to the Brian May Video on culling badgers.

LEGENDARY Queen guitarist Brian May surprised the audience at the premiere of musical We Will Rock You when he took to the stage unannounced.

The crowd at the Wales Millennium Centre had not been told May would be performing on Tuesday night.

Yesterday May attended an Assembly debate on the proposed badger cull in Wales.

He called the planned measure - reintroduced by Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones earlier this month following a court battle won by the Badger Trust - a "disgrace" and vowed to fight it all the way.

But Assembly Members last night voted in favour of going ahead with the cull by a majority of 42 to eight, though Mr May was confident the order would not eventually be carried out.

The 63-year-old music star said: "I think it's a scandal, I think it's an absolute disgrace that Elin Jones should be doing this at a time when bovine tuberculosis in Wales fell by 45% in the last two years without a single badger being culled."

He added: "Nothing can be learned from this and so many healthy, beautiful wild animals will die.

"There is no need to be killing badgers and it's a terribly irresponsible thing to be suggesting at this time, and I'm depressed that people should want to."

He said he was unhappy with Ms Jones' attempts to reintroduce the cull - which would apply to north Pembrokeshire and parts of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire if imposed - even after a court had opposed the plan.

"It's hard to be civil. I try to be civil because I'm a decent human being," he said.

Read More http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/03/24/brian-may-determined-to-rock-disgraceful-badger-cull-91466-28395056/#ixzz1IHFFS7Ar

Although the High Court defeated plans for a similar badger culling scheme, Elin Jones, Rural Affairs Minister for the Welsh Assembly Government, said that although she had considered all of the evidence, she has decided the cull should go ahead in the designated areas as it is "necessary to destroy badgers in order to substantially reduce bovine TB" in west Wales but that "it's not a decision that any government minister, myself included, takes lightly."

"It baffles me that the legal experts in this country can come down against Elin Jones on three separate counts and she can still go ahead just months later," said Brian May, guitarist for the rock band Queen and an animal rights campaigner. He went on to say, "It makes a mockery of Welsh law in my opinion." And that if necessary, he would work to take the case back to the High Court.

Although deemed a "dead-end policy" by Colin Booty, an RSPCA scientist, the cull of badgers in certain areas of west Wales is again on the cards. The Badger Trust has presented evidence that culling will not solve the problem of bovine TB and yet Ms Jones has decided to push ahead with the cull. The farming unions and veterinary associations both welcome the revival of the policy to cull the badgers and think a cull is the only way to defeat bovine TB.

Another organisation firmly against the cull, Pembrokeshire Against the Cull, says that Elin Jones "is ignoring science, sound economics, human rights issues and the views of the overwhelming majority of the public."

Dr Chris Cheeseman, a badger ecologist and formerly the head of the Wildlife Disease Unit in the UK has for the last 30 years looked at TB in the badger population. He said that the revival of the cull is a "depressing but predictable development" as "the Welsh Assembly Government is on a mission to cull badgers" and "this is politically driven because the science doesn't support a cull."

Dr. Cheeseman goes on to say that UK scientists found vaccination reduced the infection rate amongst wild badgers by 74% over a four year testing programme. He cautioned that it can't be proven that there will definitely be a reduction in the rate of new TB bovine cases by vaccinating badgers. However vaccination is a good alternative to culling particularly when a vaccine is developed (in 4-5 years) that badgers could ingest. If further studies are successful, vaccinating the badgers could also bring down the need for testing and slaughtering cattle.

Sadly this kind of research which could cost millions of pounds and take years, is not even on the drawing board. At present, killing badgers seems to be the easiest way out.

Tourism is being affected by the proposed badger cull. We are being notified by Bed & Breakfast owners in the region that people are starting to ask the question. Are you in the badger culling area? They of course have to reply YES and the people just don't book and they never hear from them again.

A lose / lose situation for the badgers and the tourist industry, well done Elin Jones and associates.

Some better pictures coming soon....

Our badgers will eat anything and that has been proved, night after night when nothing is ever left for the marauding hopeful magpies, crows and rooks as the dawn breaks.

The first thing to go is ALWAYS anything that has peanut butter or peanut butter and honey and then peanuts and then the rest. Gone are the days of digging for worms and small rodents.