Badger Cull: Ancient woodland emptied of its badgers

The badger cull is robbing our forests and countryside of these most precious and integral inhabitants

A "quiet tragedy" has unfolded in a beautiful ancient woodland in Northamptonshire. Everdon Stubbs has lost its badgers, with previously thriving setts now standing silent, according to the Northamptonshire Badger Group. The badger cull is to blame. Due to surrounding landowners' participation in the murderous policy, the group says badgers have "vanished" locally, including from the ancient woodland.

Everdon Stubbs is an ancient woodland close to Daventry. As the Woodland Trust which manages the site has explained, it is a classic English bluebell wood. For generations, badgers have made a home amongst the carpet of bluebells and rare daffodils that grow at the feet of the wood's lush variety of trees.

But their underground homes, known as setts, now lie empty. The Northamptonshire Badger Group made the discovery after the Woodland Trust asked the group to check the site due to reports of a blocked sett.

As the group's chairperson, Sally Jones, explained in a video when attending the wood:

"I can confirm that the sett is not blocked, it's actually dead. So, these entrances [to the sett] are full of leaf litter. It's not active anymore. And the reason it's not active anymore is because this wood is surrounded by cull land. So, many of the farms we know around Everdon Stubbs are culling badgers and have been for three years. And so this sett, sadly, which used to be beautiful, is now no longer active."

The discovery points to an often overlooked problem with the despised cull policy, which the badger group summed up perfectly. "Cull zones don't stop at boundaries," it wrote on Facebook. In other words, the policy has impacts beyond the boundaries inside which Natural England approves badger killing to take place.

Badgers: a woodland's ruling clan

As the Woodland Trust has highlighted, badgers are "a wood's ruling clan, often occupying the same sett for generations and laying a network of well-trodden paths through the undergrowth." The digging they do around their homes increases diversity of plants like mosses and liverworts. In turn, this creates microhabitats – and supplies food – to other woodland organisms. Likewise, badger behaviours, such as digging, can improve soils, helping other plants to settle and grow. Badgers also disperse seeds (in their poop) and other wild animals utilise their homes for breeding and temporary shelters.

Jones says that when populations of keystone species like badgers disappear or decline, there are "very few or no other species that can fulfil their role," which can "lead to biodiversity loss, changes to ecosystem structures and even its collapse." She adds:

"Badgers are the largest remaining land carnivore (technically omnivores!), because man has killed off all those that used to be here. Now they want to wipe out badgers. Where will it end."

Jones says that the cull zone surrounds Everdon Stubbs "for miles in all directions" and includes a significant amount of land that "hasn't got a cow for miles!"

The 4th and final year of intensive culling there is due to begin in Autumn, if it gets a stamp of approval from Natural England. Already, after three years of killing badgers "we have dead setts, that were once thriving. across the cull zone," says Jones.

Recent reports from Wild Justice and the Badger Trust indicate that Natural England has approved nine supplementary licences for culls commencing this June. This is despite the body facing legal action over its outrageous approval of supplementary culls last year against the advice of its own Director of Science. Over 10,700 badgers were killed in those culls, the Badger Trust has reported.

Considering the legal challenge, Wild Justice's Ruth Tingay pointed out in mid-May that it "would be sensible for Natural England to defer any decision about future cull licences until this case concludes."

Clearly, Natural England has not chosen the sensible option. This does not bode well for badgers who could be killed in further culls later this year, such as remaining individuals in the cull zone surrounding Everdon Stubbs.

An unnatural industry

Like many others, including Protect the Wild, the Northamptonshire Badger Group is convinced that "badgers are not the problem." Jones explains:

"It’s well known and documented that bTB [bovine tuberculosis] is primarily transmitted cattle to cattle. It’s clear and obvious that cattle would transmit it to each other, they’re kept in huge numbers, many inside, stressed and filthy. The whole cattle industry is unnatural and it’s no wonder it is rife with disease.

On top of this, the bTB testing regime is "woefully inadequate," says Jones, as the main tests used often fail to detect infections, leaving "many infected cattle within the herd."

In short, Jones says badgers have been made a "scapegoat for the failings of the cattle industry." On this, Protect the Wild wholeheartedly agrees, as our readers will know. It is abundantly clear that killing badgers cannot and will not solve the issue of bTB in cows. Yet, officials continue to green-light their slaughter, robbing our forests and countryside of these most precious and integral inhabitants.

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