Badger cull under fire after policing costs for two pilot schemes tops £2.4m

Badger
PA
The cost of policing two pilot badger culls was more than £2.4million – or £1,300 per animal killed.

The cost in ­Gloucestershire was £1.7million and £738,985 in Somerset, police chiefs have revealed.

The pilots aimed to establish whether badger culling could be carried out humanely, effectively and safely, with 921 badgers being killed in Gloucestershire and a further 940 being shot in Somerset.

However, neither pilot managed to kill the 70% of the population needed to make the cull effective, despite a five-week and three-day extension in Gloucestershire and a three-week extension in Somerset.

In Somerset 65% of the badger population was killed and in Gloucestershire the figure was 40%.

Dominic Dyer, policy adviser for Care for the Wild, said: “The policing costs in Gloucestershire alone exceeded £1.7 million which is half a million more than the total cost of the Welsh Government badger vaccination programme in 2012.

“We need the Government to be honest with the public before they decide to roll the cull out nationally. Is culling badgers really going to help farmers?

“All the evidence says no. It’s now clear that the badger cull pilots have failed on scientific, humaneness and costs grounds.

“The wheels are rapidly coming off the Government’s badger cull wagon, and it’s time to bring this disastrous policy to an end.”

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said if left unchecked, bovine TB, “will cost £1billion over the next 10 years”.



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Just another blood sport IMO....They have to be allowed to legally kill a defenceless animal, with no recourse of course, glad that the activists are taking on these RW imbeciles!   

I suppose the costs went up because the Badgers moved the goalposts. Crafty little buggers they are.

Irn Bru wrote:I suppose the costs went up because the Badgers moved the goalposts. Crafty little buggers they are.

Indeed!....But one would suggest, that they would need a little bit of help though!   

why are you killing badgers?
aren't they Natives?

veya_victaous wrote:why are you killing badgers?
aren't they Natives?

lol

@catman
???
that is a real questions, we tend to try and leave native animals alone, (but Rabbits/canetoads can go Fuck them selves     )

veya_victaous wrote:@catman
???
that is a real questions, we tend to try and leave native animals alone, (but Rabbits/canetoads can go Fuck them selves     )

IMO it's a food source issue, and i don't think that we can eat badger....I mean...my favourite meat is lamb...So perhaps i'm being a little bit hypocritical, i would agree.

are they that destructive?
they seem no worse than Wombats, Dingoes(natives so we try and leave) or Foxes(Introduced so killed)

I must admit never seen a badger in the wild and I do get them confused with Raccoons   

we sometimes have to cull Koalas and Kangaroos.
Koalas is our fault and is mainly habitat loss, good conditions see populations spikes but there is no where for the extra population to go with out crossing urbanised areas(we do move them sometimes to areas where populations have been negatitvely affected by bushfires etc)

Kangaroos it is just needed, seems the Aboriginals accidently half domesticated them. They have adapted to be fast breeders to cope with hunting by aboriginals, the fit and healthy Kangaroos have no natural predators due to the predators being wiped out by Aboriginals thousands of years earlier. also they do out number humans 4 or 5 to 1.

veya_victaous wrote:are they that destructive?
they seem no worse than Wombats, Dingoes(natives so we try and leave) or Foxes(Introduced so killed)

I must admit never seen a badger in the wild and I do get them confused with Raccoons   

we sometimes have to cull Koalas and Kangaroos.
Koalas is our fault and is mainly habitat loss, good conditions see populations spikes but there is no where for the extra population to go with out crossing urbanised areas(we do move them sometimes to areas where populations have been negatitvely affected by bushfires etc)

Kangaroos it is just needed, seems the Aboriginals accidently half domesticated them. They have adapted to be fast breeders to cope with hunting by aboriginals, the fit and healthy Kangaroos have no natural predators due to the predators being wiped out by Aboriginals thousands of years earlier. also they do out number humans 4 or 5 to 1.

The reason that they are saying that badgers need to be killed, is that they spread disease to cattle...The jury is out on that one, but most of the scientific studies suggest that isn't the case.

I allways thought that it was the cattle that gave T.B to the badgers.

nicko wrote:
I allways thought that it was the cattle that gave T.B to the badgers.

 

TRUE, Nicko ~ that's the way it works in reality...

CLAIMING otherwise, and against all evidence, that a few innocent badgers are acting as a haven ("nexus" in bio-speak..) for TB simply adds more ammo' to the puerile arguments being bandied about by those blood-thirsty badger-killers portraying themselves as socially minded heroes of the moment..

(Much like groups of sheep and cattle farmers (corporate "ranchers") over in parts of Mid-West and West USA have used scares over wolf and mountain lion numbers to gain government sponsored wildlife culls, along with subsidised fencing and stock vaccinations ~ shifting $$$millions$$$ into the pockets of certain politically-connected "ranchers" in the process..).

"Culling" badgers, foxes and otters have been national disgraces and ongoing shame for the British government over many years..

NEVER MIND that treating/vaccinating the wildlife [via 'bait' feed drops..] would have been a lot cheaper and more effective !

My god, make your mind up lefties - is £2.4million pennies or is it a lot of money???

@andy
it is about efficiency and relative to the issue that is being combated

Actually that seems pretty cheap (but I have no idea what sort of area you are talking about it, might be very expensive if it is only a hundred square kilometres)

My question was more why? there doesn't seem to be an economic, health or environmental impact caused by the badgers. But killing native species in large number does often cause one.  :\\:[: 

veya_victaous wrote:@andy
it is about efficiency and relative to the issue that is being combated

Actually that seems pretty cheap  (but I have no idea what sort of area you are talking about it, might be very expensive if it is only a hundred square kilometres)

My question was more why? there doesn't seem to be an economic, health or environmental impact caused by the badgers. But killing native species in large number does often cause one.   :\\:[: 

It is to stop the spread of T.B. to cattle.

Kill more - one of them cost me £500 when it smashed my fan and motor on my car.

BigAndy9 wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:@andy
it is about efficiency and relative to the issue that is being combated

Actually that seems pretty cheap  (but I have no idea what sort of area you are talking about it, might be very expensive if it is only a hundred square kilometres)

My question was more why? there doesn't seem to be an economic, health or environmental impact caused by the badgers. But killing native species in large number does often cause one.   :\\:[: 

It is to stop the spread of T.B. to cattle.

Kill more - one of them cost me £500 when it smashed my fan and motor on my car.

I thought badgers didn't give TB to cattle.

Anyway, they are much cuter than a cow.

Uhmm....well, badgers are certainly nice to see, however they do seem somewhat ....numerous these days, judging by the number of road kill you see.
It is rather a moot point about which gives what TB, do badgers give cows TB or vice versa?, do badgers act as a resevoit for bovine TB?
I have even read that the TB strain in badgers is different to that in cattle. A lot of information, and little of it trustworthy, tainted as it is by vested interests.
However as to the cull, what do you expect in an action carried out by the government, civil servants and just who's? so called marksmen.
If there IS good reason to reduce badger numbers they should have put them on what is known over here as "the general licence"
which is a licence issued openly by the wildlife authority to all those who shoot, basically allowing the open and unrestricted shooting of "pest species", rabbits, wood pigeons and a few others. If they did that for 1 maybe 2 years, numbers would be reduced easily...and more importantly FOR FREE. (the general licence can be restricted...so those shooting a particular species HAVE to report the numbers shot monthly at least., if the numbers shot starts getting too high , the licence can be changed at any time to remove that species from the "wanted" list)

Blimey Bigandy, if the damage was 500 quid its a wonder it dint write your "heap of the week" off  seriously...thats what you have insurance for.....
AND of course...its yours, you could have taken it for "roadkill pizza", mind you it might not have tasted very good...have you noticed that even crows wont touch a badger carcase, not surprising tho, have you ever smelt even fresh badger ::zomb:: 

BigAndy9 wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:@andy
it is about efficiency and relative to the issue that is being combated

Actually that seems pretty cheap  (but I have no idea what sort of area you are talking about it, might be very expensive if it is only a hundred square kilometres)

My question was more why? there doesn't seem to be an economic, health or environmental impact caused by the badgers. But killing native species in large number does often cause one.   :\\:[: 

It is to stop the spread of T.B. to cattle.

Kill more - one of them cost me £500 when it smashed my fan and motor on my car.

  

"STOP the spread of TB to cattle.." !!!

Now, AS IF THAT wasn't the biggest load of baloney, to start with !  THAT rubbish should be sounding warning bells by itself !

TB has long been ENDEMIC in British cattle ~ cows in Britain are actually THE MAIN SOURCE of TB outbreaks in other cows over there ! (Along with Mad cow diseases, Foot in Mouth diseases, and a few others, THAT'S why many countries will only import inspected, processed and pre-packaged meat products from places like Britain, France, Belgium, Holland..).

So, ANY nonsense about "protecting the cattle" simply further exposes the TRUE agenda of the cull's proponents...