Tag: tom langton

Crowdfunder | Help Stop DEFRA Plans to Extend Badger Culling

Posted on by

Tom Langton is a highly respected ecologist who has been involved in many different wildlife disputes including Sizewell, the Pont Valley in County Durham, and perhaps most notably, the government-backed mass killing of badgers. Now Tom has launched a Crowdfunder which Mark Avery has backed, saying on his hugely influential blog that Tom is “a Badger expert and seasoned campaigner. His crowdfunder to challenge DEFRA on plans to extend the Badger cull deserves support – and I’ve put a few quid of my own in that direction.” And so have we….

Continue reading

Podcast: The Badger Cull at the end of 2017

Posted on by

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”. Charlie Moores 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.

Continue reading

Podcast: Sizewell C and the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB

Posted on by

French energy giant EDF Energy has submitted a proposal to build a new power station at Sizewell, adjoining two existing power stations Sizewell A and Sizewell B. The site lies in the heart of the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and right next to the RSPB’s flagship reserve at Minsmere. EDF Energy says that Sizewell C has “the potential to generate the reliable low carbon energy the country needs for decades“, while opponents say the development will “lay waste” to vast swathes of the countryside – much of which is legally protected.

Continue reading

Podcast: Tom Langton | The Badger Cull – Judicial Challenge

Posted on by

Charlie Moores talks with renowned ecologist Tom Langton to understand more about the basis for legal challenges to the government-sanctioned badger cull, about the ‘carnivore release effect’ which has astonishingly led to Michael Gove [the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] ordering the shooting of foxes that might impact protected wildlife as a result of the removal of badgers from the landscape, ‘low-risk area’ culling, and – most controversially perhaps – Tom’s opinion that it’s the responsibility of academics to now admit that the cull is ‘a nonsense’.

Continue reading