Podcast: The Badger Cull at the end of 2017
In September 2017 the Badger Trust wrote on their website that “DEFRA [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs] has announced the continuation and expansion of the killing of thousands of badgers across England. 11 new zones have been confirmed with a maximum number of 32,247 badgers to be killed in 2017 alone! This means that, by the end of this year, 47076 badgers will be dead as a result of the cull”.
By the end of this year – 2017 – our own government will have issued licences – ironically under the terms of the protection of badgers Act – to kill almost 50,000 badgers, a species protected across Europe and only increasing in the UK after centuries of persecution, abuse, and the hell of so-called ‘sport’.
My name is Charlie Moores, and I sat down to discuss the extension of the cull, the reasons for it, its impact on the countryside, and the resistance to it – perhaps as consumers looking at which foods we choose to buy – with Dominic Dyer, chief executive of the Badger Trust, and Tom Langton a consulting ecologist who has worked in UK and international nature conservation for 40 years, is a member of the Badger Trust and who has worked since 2013 on aspects of law and science relating to badger culling and bovine TB control.
“…we’ve got to this point because all along this has not been about science, not been about disease control…it’s about short-term economic and political interests overriding conservation of the environment and the protection of an endangered species…”
September 2017
- Originally uploaded to Lush Player
