Tuesday was a sad day for our wild animals. The BBC reported that the badger cull will be extended into five new areas, although the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) would not confirm that the selections had been made. News that the already failed cull would be expanded is particularly disappointing to […]
Tag: Badger
The Nutcracker Badger
It’s 6 January 2016…early in the morning. The sun has just risen, and we spent its rising with a lioness close to the Rooiputs waterhole in the Kalahari desert, more specifically, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park that straddles the borders of South Africa and Botswana. South Africa is experiencing a heat wave of sweaty proportions – […]
POLL: Should the UK halt its failed badger cull policy?
The imminent expansion of England’s controversial badger cull “flies in the face of scientific evidence”, according to the nation’s foremost experts, who have called on new prime minister, Theresa May, to halt the “failed” policy. The scientists say the badger cull, intended to curb tuberculosis in cattle, is a “risky, costly, and inhumane” distraction and […]
POLL: Should the badger cull in the UK be stopped?
Police are investigating after a list apparently showing farmers who have signed up for the next phase of the badger cull was leaked to animal rights groups. One group that advocates direct action, Stop the Cull, has said it intends to publish the list of farmers in south Devon – one of the new areas […]
POLL: Should all badger culls in the UK be stopped?
The government is to relax the restrictions on its controversial badger culls as it rolls them out to new areas in 2016. But a leading scientist has warned that the move makes it even less likely that culling will achieve its aim of reducing tuberculosis in cattle and could even make it worse. The badger […]
POLL: Should badger culls be abandoned once and for all?
The government will extend the badger cull to Dorset as part of a drive to limit tuberculosis in cattle, it was announced on Friday. The announcement follows controversial pilots in Gloucestershire and Somerset running over the past two years, with Natural England issuing licences to companies that permit six weeks of continuous culling in the […]
Red in Tooth and Claw
They’re pretty cute right? American badgers? Lookit those cute little dirty faces. So innocent, so sweet. Or not. The first time I saw the male, he was running along with a rabbit he had just killed. Well yeah, nature. Gotta eat, gotta feed those baby badgers. Watched him head to his burrow and then got […]
Our humble hedgehog is disappearing fast
They’ve been around for 15 million years; hedgehogs roamed Britain with mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers. But in a single lifetime the much-loved mammals have been driven towards extinction, their national population apparently plummeting more than thirtyfold. As Philip Larkin wrote in The Mower – a poem composed after he killed a hedgehog while cutting long […]