The Badger Culls -Pilot Culls
This is the first in a series where Wildlife Matters Investigates the Badger Culls in England. So. let’s start at the very beginning with the Pilot Culls that began in 2013.
Mycobacterium bovis, or Bovine TB, is a dangerous aerobic bacterium that, when contracted, can threaten the health of humans as well as animals such as cattle, deer, cats, dogs, pigs, alpacas, and sheep.
Back in the 1930s and 40s, this dangerous disease was responsible for an alarming number of cases and deaths–over 50,000 cases and 2500 deaths annually. By the1960s, all herds were tested twice for TB, and animals which tested positive, or ‘reactors’, were slaughtered and BovineTB became a notifiable disease as it was zoonotic and a clear risk to humans.
The government introduced compulsory cattle testing and devised a compensation programme for all destroyed cattle.
It was only a decade ago that human contraction of Tb from animals was reduced to a handful of cases per year in the UK. Immunisation and pasteurisation of milk have reduced the number of cases over the last 100 years, and many believed that it was no longer an issue.
Unfortunately, farming practices have also changed with food becoming cheaply produced and this has caused a range of diseases in cattle, including bovine TB. This has been linked to the intensive methods used in modern farming, creating an ironic situation where the production of cheap food has increased the incidence of disease.
The farmers face a distinctive predicament. When their cattle contract bovine TB, selling them or transporting them is forbidden, leading to serious financial hardship. Vaccines exist for BCG, but it is difficult to differentiate between wild TB and vaccinated TB. It is worth noting that cattle with bTB lesions are frequently found in the human food chain, with the abattoirs being the only safeguard as no government testing is carried out.
In 1997, the Krebs report was published that said that there was “compelling” evidence that badgers were involved in transmitting tuberculosis to cattle. The report recommended that a large-scale field trial be set up to quantify the impact of culling badgers on the incidence of bTB in cattle, and to determine the effectiveness of strategies to reduce the risk of a herd breakdown.
In 1998, an independent scientific group, including several members of the Krebs report group, formed and called themselves the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB (ISG). The ISG planned and oversaw the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT). The trial killed 9818 badgers, but it finally concluded that “culling badgers would have no meaningful effect on bovine TB in cattle.”
You may have expected that to be the end of culling badgers, however… On 19th July 2011, DEFRA minister, Caroline Spelman announced that the government would carry out two pilot badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire. This was part of the government’s bovine TB eradication programme.
Landowners who wish to cull badgers would need to apply for a licence from Natural England. These trials will assess whether it is possible to shoot badgers at night with a high-velocity rifle and at a rate that will ensure a minimum 70% reduction in the badger population in a trial area that must be at least 150 km2 with secure boundaries.
This method of killing is claimed to be more cost-effective than the cage-trapping methods used in previous trials.
These pilot culls got off to a bad start after DEFRA found they didn’t have any accurate data on the number of Badgers in the pilot badger cull areas, prompting the now infamous quote from Owen Paterson – the then Minister for the Environment, that the ‘Badgers had moved the goalposts” The Pilot culls were put back a year to allow DEFRA to create some data.
The Government led by David Cameron chose to ignore the outcome of the RBCT trials although this is still considered to be the benchmark for BovineTB science and research around the world, choosing to ignore the data, whilst struggling to find any of their own! The Cameron government sentenced tens of thousands of Badgers and Cattle to death and started to drive many farms towards bankruptcy.
The pilot culls were licensed to take place over 6 weeks – but the science from the RBCT said that it needed to be a maximum of 5 days to stop Badgers from leaving the culling area. This effect, known as a perturbation, was highlighted in the RBCT but ignored by the British government.
The science said that the only way to prevent perturbation was by ensuring each cull zone was defined by hard boundaries. You don’t have to be a scientist or ecologist to know that wild animals, such as badgers, crossroads every night, and sometimes end up as roadkill.
Despite this, DEFRA and Natural England failed to see that the cull zone with road boundaries was insecure. What was even more shocking was the use of rivers as secure boundaries. You see, badgers are amazing swimmers, capable of swimming across and upstream even in large rivers, It was clear that roads and rivers were not secure against badgers, or indeed pretty much all of our native wildlife.
Lord Krebs – the lead scientist on the RBCT trials – expressed his frustration in a statement to the House of Lords on 21 October, when he revealed that after nine years of intensive culling – the best possible outcome was a 16% decrease in the rate of rise of Bovine TB.
Let me try to make that a little clearer
So after nine years, there will still be more TB than at the start point in 2013, but the increase in TB would be 16% less than would have been without culling badgers.
Got it – Good Now here’s another brain twister:
The 16% reduction in the rate of rise is very different to the 30% reduction in overall bTB that the NFU claimed – although they have never provided any evidence to support their statement.
Lord Krebs also expressed concern at the wild discrepancies in the badger population estimates given by the Environment Minister, Owen Paterson, who first said that “between 500 and 800 badgers would be culled”, only to revise that figure to a staggering 5,530 a mere two days later.
Lord Krebs’s response was cogent He stated; “What this underline is that if the policy is to cull at least 70% of the badgers, we have to know what the starting number is. This variation from under 1,000 to more than 5,000 in the space of a few days underlines how difficult it is for us to have confidence that the Government will be able to instruct the farmers to cull 70% if they do not know the starting numbers. So my first question to the Minister is: how will he assure us that these numbers are accurate?”
Despite numerous warnings and pleas from scientists, conservationists and members of the public alike, Natural England issued licenses for the culling of badgers in two pilot cull areas, in Somerset and Gloucestershire, starting in 2013 and continuing in 2014.
The licences allowed up to 5530 badgers to be killed by either trapping and shooting, or by the use of free shooting for a defined period of six weeks.
The only protection the Badgers in Somerset and Gloucester now was from the Wounded Badger Patrols. Volunteers from the general public gave their time to walk along footpaths and permissible routes within both Pilot cull zones, every night for nine to eleven weeks and effectively became the protectors of a protected species. Wildlife Matters stands with and applauds every one of you
The Independent Expert Panel was appointed by Defra to help ministers evaluate the effectiveness, humaneness and safety of the Gloucestershire and Somerset pilots. The IEP noted that when both trials failed to kill sufficient badgers within the specified period, they were extended on the advice of the Chief Vet, Nigel Gibbens. However, the government insisted the IEP was only to concern itself only with the initial six weeks of the pilot culls.
The first assessments suggested that, in those six weeks, 58% of the target number of badgers had been killed in the Somerset pilot, and 30% in the Gloucestershire pilot. However, the independent panel’s analysis, which used a more precise methodology, found that less than half of the badgers were killed in both areas over the six weeks.
Defra had also agreed on a criterion with the IEP for how the trials could be deemed humane. The standard set was for no more than 5% of the shot badgers to take more than five minutes to die. But the expert group found the time limit was exceeded by between 6.4% and 18% of shot animals, depending on the assumptions made.
The expert group, however, held back from describing the trial as “inhumane” because there may be some circumstances in which greater suffering of badgers might be justified. To me, it appears the IEP was operating with a least one hand tied behind their backs and possibly blindfolded by the Government!
The assessment also found a wide variation in the effectiveness and humaneness of the contractors brought in by farming groups to kill the badgers. To us, it is apparent from what has been observed and reported that these pilot culls were inhumane.
The government’s two-year Pilot culls were an abject failure, with their estimation of the badger population wildly inaccurate and the minimum number of badgers to reduce BovineTB far from achieved. Even more abhorrent was the fact that one in five badgers had been killed inhumanely.
So what do you think the British government concluded from their Pilot culls?
Well, they refused to listen to the science but also decided to disregard the outcomes of their pilot culls and thought it was a good idea to roll out the badger culls to new areas of the country. And just to ensure that those awkward scientists, Professors, and animal welfare campaigners couldn’t mess them about again – they disbanded the Independent Expert Panel.
Now, no one would be able to challenge their estimates, decisions or monitor their figures or claims – or at least that’s what they thought….
The Pilot Badger Culls of 2013 and 2014 raise one unavoidable question – Can we trust those in power to make decisions for the greater good?
Wildlife Matters will not rest until a thorough investigation is conducted and justice is served for the 177,000 badgers that have died, often inhumanely and all without any purpose other than to secure the votes of the farming community to ensure they remain in government.
Further Reading
Pilot Badger Culls Fail by The Wildlife Trusts
The True Toll of the Badger Cull by Badger Trust
Badger Culling by Born Free Foundation
The Culling Fields by Save Me Trust
If you enjoyed this blog, please check out more of our wildlife blogs here, or you may prefer to listen to the Wildlife Matters Podcast here.
If you want to support our work, You can donate here.