Sir, - This autumn will see the badger killers of the Department of Agriculture unleash yet another orchestrated pogrom on our native badger population. As usual it will be in the guise of "research" into bovine TB. In an attempt to validate the findings of the East Offaly Badger Project, it has been decided to replicate this project in four new areas, Donegal, Cork, Kilkenny and Monaghan.
To the best of my knowledge, the full report of the EOBP has, for some strange reason, never been published. The original project cost the lives of 1,700 badgers, fewer than 200 of whom were infected. A much smaller number still would have been infectious, i.e. capable of shedding the TB bacillus. There is of course, absolutely no scientific evidence to explain how the badger can, under normal field conditions, infect cattle.
The thinking in Britain is that badger-culling strategies have no scientific basis. For more than 20 years the Ministry of Agriculture has been eliminating the animal. Some 25,000 badgers have so far been slaughtered, to no avail. Bovine TB has not been eradicated or reduced in cattle. But far from learning from its neighbour's mistakes, Ireland insists on following blindly down the same road.
Of course we are aware of the almost miraculous 80 per cent drop in bovine TB locally, following the Offaly badger removal project. Whether this reduction can be sustained over the next decade or so remains to be seen. But let us also remind ourselves that, not too far from home, Northern Ireland achieved and maintained a similarly low incidence of bovine TB without resorting to killing badgers. It was brought about by a stringent testing and a computerised movement permit system, the feeling being that "wilflife played no major role in the spread of the disease".
Badger snaring and the subsequent shooting is a barbaric act. To secure a wild animal in a snare, a slim wire needs to draw fairly tight around the animal's body even when the regulatory "stops" are in position. The animal, realising that it is trapped, panics and struggles furiously against the anchor stake. It will spend many hours circling around in the snare until it is exhausted and often injured in the process of trying to release itself. Furthermore, snaring throughout the breeding season means lactating sows have also to endure the added stress of being unable to fulfil their most urgent and natural instinct, to feed and attend their young. Orphaned cubs die slow deaths from starvation, not that the Department of Agriculture has ever been unduly concerned about such incidents.
To date, Department "research" has cost the lives of about 14,000 badgers. Over the next five years our own real, live "Brockie Horror Show" in the four designated aras will see many more badgers sacrificed for their unproven role in the spread of bovine TB. Will there be a mention of bad farm management? Or of a TB test that is not 100 per cent reliable? Of course not. Brock will be there to take the blame for all the shortcomings in the 43-yearold fiasco that is otherwise known as the bovine TB eradication scheme. That will be sufficient to appease the farmers and the vets; and the Department of Agriculture will be seen to be "doing something". - Yours, etc.,
National Co-ordinator, Badgerwatch (Ireland), Lismore Lawn, Waterford.