Sleep Well Badger
I have lost count of the hours I have spent watching and photographing badgers, in the fields around my home and in the gardens of friends who are fortunate to have them as visitors. My love affair with these beautiful sentient animals began many years ago with a young badger cub that I spent time with in one of these fields. This young cub was so curious and tolerant of my presence that it would approach me as I lay in the grass, on one occassion it pushed its nose inside my camera’s lenshood, covering it in slabber. On one warm evening, in between foraging for food, the cub fell asleep in the field of flowering clover next to me. With their distinctive black and white markings, badgers are one of our most well known animals being immortalised by Kenneth Grahame in his book: The Wind in the Willows.
Sadly, over 210,000 badgers have been killed since the current badger cull began in England in 2013, this represents more than half of the entire UK population of badgers. This misguided, unscientific and barbaric cull of our badgers was introduced by the UK’s current Conservative Government as a fundamentally flawed attempt to control bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle. The scientific evidence has confirmed that this cull has done nothing to reduce bTB in cattle. The biggest risk factors for any cattle herd are poorly regulated cattle movement, poor biosecurity, and an outdated, unreliable testing regime. Only last week, I watched in disbelielf as a farmer I did not recognise spread slurry on the fields around my home. It is actions such as the spreading of slurry from one farm to another, a clear and fragrant example of poor biosecurity, that are the cause of bTB in cattle. Yet the UK Government has failed to recognise this evidence and continues with this cull.
Driving home yesterday evening, the headlights of my car picked out a young badger lying in the lane that leads to my house. The young badger looked unhurt as if it was sleeping peacefully. At this time of year, badger cubs that were born underground in setts in January and February are still reliant on milk from their mothers. Slowing my car to a stop, I got out to check on the badger and to see if it was a lactating sow with cubs. On approaching closer, I found the young badger, which would have been born the previous year, to be alive but clearly hurt. Hoping, that it was merely stunned and would recover, I stayed with the young badger, turning my car’s hazard warning lights and my iPhone’s torch on as a warning to any other motorists, my fear was that the young badger would be hit again by another vehicle. Sadly, the young badger’s breathing became more laboured and slowed until it eventually stopped. I have seen too many dead badgers on our roads but this was the first time that I had watched one die. Having a great love of these animals, it was heartbreaking to watch on unable to help this young badger.
The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the World. What little is left of our natural world is under increasing pressure. It is time that the badger cull that has taken half of the UK’s badger population is ended. To learn more about badgers and the work that is being done to protect them, visit the website of the Badger Trust.
"I see you don't understand, and I must explain it to you. Well, very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves now, before ever it had planted itself and grown up to what it now is, there was a city—a city of people, you know. Here, where we are standing, they lived, and walked, and talked, and slept, and carried on their business. Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a powerful people, and rich, and great builders. They built to last, for they thought their city would last for ever...People come—they stay for a while, they flourish, they build—and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I've been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be."
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows