geuss
they know what theyre doing
like NZ's annual cull mof KAIMANAWA HORSE
fortunately,only a few hundred
This article is more than
2 months old
More than 100,000 badgers slaughtered in discredited cull policy
This article is more than
2 months old
Badger Trust condemns ‘largest destruction of a protected species in living memory’ as government admits failings and focuses on vaccination
Jamie Doward
Sat 2
More than 35,000 badgers were killed last year, official figures show. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
More than 35,000 badgers were killed during last year’s cull, according to long overdue figures slipped out by the government on Friday at the height of the coronavirus crisis.
The total has dismayed animal rights campaigners, who claim that for the first time
since the cull was introduced in 2013, more badgers were shot last year than cattle were slaughtered because they have bovine-TB.
Dominic Dyer, the chief executive of the Badger Trust, said: “The government licensed the killing of 35,034 badgers in 2019 in 40 culling zones stretching from Cornwall to Cumbria in the largest destruction of a protected species in living memory.”
More than 70% of the badgers (24,645) were killed as a result of controlled shooting.
Badgers, stoats and otters stage ‘incredible’ revival
This article is more than
1 year old
Britain’s carnivore numbers are booming after clampdown on hunting and pollution
Patrick Barkham
Badger populations are estimated to have doubled since the 1980s. Photograph: Tim Hunt/Alamy
They must survive government culls, gamekeepers, poisoning, persecution and increasingly busy roads but, in modern times at least, Britain’s carnivores have never had it so good: badger, otter, pine marten, polecat, stoat and weasel populations have “markedly improved” since the 1960s,
according to a new study.
The otter, polecat and pine marten have bounced back from the brink of extinction, and the country’s only carnivorous mammal now in danger of being wiped out is the wildcat, with the dwindling Scottish populations hit by hybridisation with domestic and feral cats.
Britain’s carnivores have largely “done it for themselves” and recovered often unexpectedly quickly after a reduction in harmful human activities – hunting, trapping and the use of toxic chemicals – according to scientists from Exeter University, Vincent
Wildlife Trust and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.
But the scientists warn that, while carnivore populations have recovered over the course of a human lifetime, most are still at long-term historical lows, with much more scope for recovery in distribution and density.
“Carnivores have recovered in a way that would have seemed incredibly unlikely in the 1970s, when extinction of some species looked like a real possibility,” said lead author Katie Sainsbury from the
Environment and Sustainability Institute at Exeter University.
![]()
FacebookTwitterPinterest
Pine marten. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy
Advertisement
“Most of these species have essentially recovered by themselves, once pressures from predator controls and pollutants were reduced, and it’s taken them a while. Yes, there are more of them now than in most people’s lifetimes, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t potential for populations to grow and spread further.”
The reasons for each carnivore’s recovery are different. Otters were harmed by organochlorine pesticides washed into rivers but have returned to every English county since the pesticides were banned and hunting was outlawed in 1978. There are now an estimated 11,000.
