Dominic Dyer

Badgered to Death: The People and Politics of the Badger Cull (eBook, ePUB)

Introduction by Chris Packham

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Dominic Dyer explores the science and electioneering behind Britain's most controversial wildlife policy: the badger cull.

He exposes the catastrophic handling of bovine TB by the British government, the political manoeuvring that engineered the badger cull in 2010, and the ongoing close relationship in perpetuating the cull between the National Farmers Union and the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

He shines an unflattering spotlight on Cabinet ministers, the veterinary profession, environmental NGOs and the BBC.

Foreword by Chris Packham, BBC Springwatch presenter

REVIEWS


'A thriller, whodunnit and impassioned polemic, this is the inside story of the badger cull.

'A vital must-read for anyone concerned about the badger's enduring place in the British countryside.'

(Patrick Barkham, nature writer for The Guardian.)

It should be read by all those battling against government policies that put money ahead of science and the environment. Our natural world is too important to be over-ridden in this way.

Dyer... pays tribute to the 'Badger Army', those many individuals from all walks of life who turned out to protest and importantly, once culling started, to protect the badgers out in the field.

Badgered to Death is for them because it tells them just why they must keep fighting the culls. It will convince any reader how very wrong and ineffective the culls will prove to be.

(Lesley Docksey, The Ecologist)

I enjoyed reading this book and I strongly recommend it to you.

If you sign up to the main message of the book, that these culls are a waste of money, a waste of Badgers and at best a partial and inefficient way to reduce bovine TB then you will be hopping mad right now and reading this book won't calm you down, it will energise you.

(Mark Avery, MarkAvery.info)

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Canbury
• Erscheinungstermin: 18. August 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780993040764
• Artikelnr.: 47392207

Autorenporträt

Defra statistics show that despite killing thousands of badgers, the number of cattle slaughtered for TB continues to rise both in and around the cull zones. We could kill every badger in England and remove them in parts of the country where they have lived for over half a million years and TB would still be present in the national cattle herd.

There is now evidence that badgers actively avoid cattle in pastures and farmyards, and cattle avoid feeding on grass where badgers urinate or defecate, therefore making the likelihood of badgers passing on TB to cattle within the farming environment is so low it is impossible to distinguish it from any other potential environmental vector, including the cattle themselves.

The Government has demonised badgers for political purposes and is now killing them - at huge cost to the taxpayer - as a political fig leaf to the farming lobby, to mask failures going back more than 40 years in the management of bovine TB in cattle.

The only effective way to reduce bovine TB is to follow the approach of the Welsh government, which is to introduce annual TB testing for all cattle, making use of both the TB skin test and the gamma interferon blood test to better detect TB in cattle. This needs to be combined with tighter cattle movement controls and bio security at the farm gate, including tighter controls over the use of slurry, which can spread TB bacteria.

New TB incidents in the Welsh herd are down by 14 per cent over the past 12 months, and 94 per cent are now free of TB - and no badgers were killed.

It's time to stop playing the "badger blame game" and introduce a bovine TB control policy that is good for farmers, taxpayers and the future of our precious badgers.

Taken from an article by Dominic Dyer at independent.co.uk.