Tuesday, March 05, 2024
Tories in the wild
The Tories like to think of themselves as the party of the countryside, but who knew that they wanted to turn rural England into a tame theme park without any wildlife?
This scenario at least comes to mind when reading the comments of the Conservative MP for South Dorset, Richard Drax, who actually stood up in the House of Commons to dismiss calls by animal rights activists and conservation groups to end the badger cull and instead suggested more animals, such as deer and foxes, should also be culled.
The Independent reports that Drax had earlier raised the case of “a beaver being released illegally… in west Dorset”.
According to the Badger Trust, more than 210,000 badgers have been killed since the cull began in England in 2013 in an effort to tackle bovine tuberculosis:
Mr Drax said TB was a “major problem” in the South West, telling a Commons debate on farming: “Culling has proved to work, and can I suggest that rather than talking about stopping culling on badgers and to introduce some other form, that all wild animals have to be culled.
“Because if they don’t their health deteriorates. They don’t have any predators in today’s world. Foxes, deer, badgers. We don’t want to wipe them out, we just simply want them controlled.
“This is just pure common sense.”
He said: “There is no sense, in our view, in reintroducing beavers into small chalk streams, or any other form of stream in Dorset. Beavers dam rivers, they would then be protected no doubt by every organisation that would want it protected, farmland then floods.
“Beavers don’t hang around and say ‘this is my home’, as has been proved in Scotland – they breed and move elsewhere and do the same in other rivers. And, as I understand it, in Scotland they’ve had to be culled because they’ve broken out of the area that was initially given to them.
“Can the Government please look at not only the illegal releasing of beavers into rivers – if indeed this is the case and that hasn’t been proven as yet – but certainly to the legal release and this emphasis on rewilding which, while we all want to see wild animals, there is a proper place and location for each of the various species.”
There is a scientific term for Drax's pseudo science, it is 'bollocks'. You cannot just tame the countryside by lockimg all the wildlife away or killing it off and nor should we try. And as for his clains on the badger cull, those are also nonsense.
Every independent study of the cull has shown it to be ineffective and inhumane. Defra's own data suggest that while 15 per cent of badgers may test positive for bovine TB, just 1.6 per cent of them are capable of passing on the disease. This means 98.4% pose no risk whatsoever to cattle and 85% are likely to be completely bTB free. Trying to control bTB in cattle by culling badgers that don't have bTB doesn't make any sense.
Surely it is time to stop kowtowing to the farmers and actually adopt a bTB control measure that works, and does not decimate the countryside.
This scenario at least comes to mind when reading the comments of the Conservative MP for South Dorset, Richard Drax, who actually stood up in the House of Commons to dismiss calls by animal rights activists and conservation groups to end the badger cull and instead suggested more animals, such as deer and foxes, should also be culled.
The Independent reports that Drax had earlier raised the case of “a beaver being released illegally… in west Dorset”.
According to the Badger Trust, more than 210,000 badgers have been killed since the cull began in England in 2013 in an effort to tackle bovine tuberculosis:
Mr Drax said TB was a “major problem” in the South West, telling a Commons debate on farming: “Culling has proved to work, and can I suggest that rather than talking about stopping culling on badgers and to introduce some other form, that all wild animals have to be culled.
“Because if they don’t their health deteriorates. They don’t have any predators in today’s world. Foxes, deer, badgers. We don’t want to wipe them out, we just simply want them controlled.
“This is just pure common sense.”
He said: “There is no sense, in our view, in reintroducing beavers into small chalk streams, or any other form of stream in Dorset. Beavers dam rivers, they would then be protected no doubt by every organisation that would want it protected, farmland then floods.
“Beavers don’t hang around and say ‘this is my home’, as has been proved in Scotland – they breed and move elsewhere and do the same in other rivers. And, as I understand it, in Scotland they’ve had to be culled because they’ve broken out of the area that was initially given to them.
“Can the Government please look at not only the illegal releasing of beavers into rivers – if indeed this is the case and that hasn’t been proven as yet – but certainly to the legal release and this emphasis on rewilding which, while we all want to see wild animals, there is a proper place and location for each of the various species.”
There is a scientific term for Drax's pseudo science, it is 'bollocks'. You cannot just tame the countryside by lockimg all the wildlife away or killing it off and nor should we try. And as for his clains on the badger cull, those are also nonsense.
Every independent study of the cull has shown it to be ineffective and inhumane. Defra's own data suggest that while 15 per cent of badgers may test positive for bovine TB, just 1.6 per cent of them are capable of passing on the disease. This means 98.4% pose no risk whatsoever to cattle and 85% are likely to be completely bTB free. Trying to control bTB in cattle by culling badgers that don't have bTB doesn't make any sense.
Surely it is time to stop kowtowing to the farmers and actually adopt a bTB control measure that works, and does not decimate the countryside.
