When it comes to iconic British animals, four immediately spring to mind – my mind, at least – the fox, the hedgehog, the dormouse, and the badger. The first of these is, most regrettably, the subject of scorn and the target of hunters, the next two are unrestrainedly beloved, but the last is a bit of a conundrum, being both legally protected and at the same time the subject of a government-directed extermination campaign.
While recently in England for Birdfair, I heard quite a lot about “the cull,” the Cameron – and now May – governments plan to kill badgers in an effort to fight the spread of Bovine TB amongst the nation’s cattle. But how do badgers spread TB to cows? And for that fact, do they? The whole matter seemed to make little sense.
Fortunately for the perplexed – myself very much included – I discovered that Dominic Dyer, chief executive of The Badger Trust, has recently written a book on the subject of badgers, Bovine TB, and the cull. Titled Badgered to Death: The People and Politics of the Badger Cull, Dyer’s book promises to open all the doors and windows of the closed rooms in which decisions are made, letting daylight shine into the murkiness surrounding the cull, how it came to be, and what scientific research (and how much… or indeed, how little) is being used to justify it.
