“…It’s an exit strategy – a viable one – one that holds water – and, yes, it’s light at the end of the tunnel – but we’ve got a long fight ahead of us….”

In February 2018 the UK government commissioned Professor Sir Charles Godfray to conduct an independent review into its policy of culling badgers – a protected species of course – to control bovine tuberculosis or bTb and to achieve ‘Officially Bovine Tuberculosis Free’ status in England by 2038. The review took place during spring and summer 2018, was reported to Ministers in October that year, and a government response was – at last – published on the 5th of March this year, 2020. The review’s conclusion appears to be that badger culling – which has so far cost taxpayers an estimated £60million and resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 badgers – is NOT the solution to lowering TB in cattle and that what is required instead is a major focus on cattle-based control measures and vaccination against bTb of both badgers and cattle. Charlie Moores talks with chief-executive of the Badger Trust Dominic Dyer about this latest development.

“The guidelines that have been produced are about trying to paper over the cracks of a problem that is so big that it should never have been started in the first place.”

Charlie Moores talks with renowned ecologist Tom Langton to understand more about the basis for legal challenges to the 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’.

“We want to see a stop to badger culling and we want to see a significant increase in vaccination as a viable, humane and cost-effective alternative.”

In April 2019 the UK’s first Badger Vaccination Symposium highlighted a non-lethal alternative to the government-sanctioned Badger Cull which had taken the lives of at least 67000 badgers by the end of 2018.

The badger cull, part of the government’s strategy to tackle Bovine Tuberculosis (Btb) infection in the dairy industry, started as a trial in two pilot zones in 2013. Five years on cull zones now cover vast swathes of many counties (68% of Devon, 63% of Dorset and 54% of Cornwall for instance) and up to 42,000 badgers were targeted to be killed this year alone. But the policy is unpopular with the wider public and facing fierce criticism from experts. In this impassioned conversation Charlie Moores talks with two of the UK’s most knowledgeable and uncompromising campaigners against the cull: Dr Iain McGill, a former government vet who heads up the Brighton-based Prion Interest Group, and Dominic Dyer, chief executive of the Badger Trust.

In September 2018 undercover video footage obtained by the Hunt Investigation Team showed for the first time the cruel reality of the government’s Badger Cull policy. Charlie Moores discusses the footage with Dominic Dyer and assesses what it might mean for the general public to glimpse ‘behind the scenes’ of a policy that means the deaths of tens of thousands of badgers.

“What you need to show in a judicial review process – which is what makes it so difficult to overturn government policy – is that they’ve actually done something wrong…” The Badger Cull is the biggest planned public-funded intervention in the British countryside in the past 50 years. It’s licenced by Natural England, the government’s adviser for the natural environment in England, but highly experienced ecologist Tom Langton, working with Dominic Woodfield, has taken out two Judicial reviews against Natural England which questions the processes the public body followed in setting up the cull.

Badgers are being killed in their tens of thousands under a government policy claimed to combat BTb or bovine tuberculosis. Charlie Moores visited Somerset to walk the countryside and to talk with some of the volunteers spending night after night on the ground working to protect badgers by guarding setts, going on badger patrols, or peacefully protesting against the cull.

Charlie Moores talks with Dominic Dyer (chief-executive Badger Trust) and Tom Langton (a highly-experienced ecologist who has been working since 2013 on aspects of law and science relating to badger culling and bovine TB control) about the extension of the badger cull, its impact on biodiversity, and public resistance to it – including how consumers might be influenced by dislike of the cull when choosing which foods to buy.

With badger culls in England now looking likely to be expanded beyond the initial cull areas, it’s vital to understand our history and relationship with the UK’s largest surviving land predator. Charlie Moores gets to the heart of the subject with chief-executive of the Badger Trust, Dominic Dyer. Dominic discusses his new book, Badgered to Death, and the controversial badger culls that have motivated him to march in the streets and to put pen to paper.