LETTER: In support of a badger cull

HAVING read Coun. Sheena Dunn’s observations and thoughts on a UK badger cull, I would like to point out as a local owner of land where there has been a badger sett for at least 20 years that I have never had the pleasure of seeing a single badger.
By The Newsroom
Published 18th Jan 2013, 11:00 BST

This is because they are dusk to dawn operators so they are not one of the UK wild animals the countryside loving public can enjoy.

The only time I have ever seen a badger is lying dead on the roadside. This is becoming more and more common. Statistics show that at least 50,000 badgers are killed on our roads every year, causing damage to property and personal injury.

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Referring to Coun. Dunn’s statement about allowing farmers to shoot badgers in prescribed areas that this would cause them to scatter, what a load of hot air. Dead badgers won’t scatter and will not increase the spread of TB.

It is a well-known fact that the badger helps to decimate the wild bird population by scouring the fields where the birds nest and rear their young, simply by eating their eggs and killing the young birds before they can fly. The birds affected are curlew, lapwing, partridge, wild duck and many small wild birds.

So I believe an urgent cull of badgers in TB infected areas should take place just like when foot and mouth strikes in cattle, then over time allowing badgers from TB clear areas to repopulate them.

Referring to the half thought out suggestion that vaccination would help solve the TB problem in badgers, have these people ever tried to catch a wild animal like a badger? I doubt it.

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All most will have ever seen is badgers filmed at night in the wild looking cuddly and harmless. Catching a badger would be very difficult when their setts are under tree roots, embankments, rocky outcrops and dense hedgerows, and at what cost to the state?

I now read that Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said we are investing in 14 managed motorway schemes across the country where we will build boxes for bats and tunnels for badgers. Fifteen tunnels have already been constructed on a dual carriageway project on the A46 in the East Midlands.

The cost of these projects is expected to cost around £2 billion of taxpayers money when the UK is supposed to be broke. All this money could be better used in creating more jobs and maybe help stop the honest working people losing jobs through public sector cutbacks.

Let the farmers and gamekeepers get on with the badger cull. It won’t cost the state a penny.

PETER WOLFENDEN

(via email)

Related topics:StatisticsEast Midlands