Badgers block the road to common sense

Countryside Alliance Chief Executive Tim Bonner writes:

A country lane in Suffolk may seem a strange place to play out a debate about animal rights, but newspaper reports this week on the closure of a road which has been undermined by badgers generate just that. Closed roads and other such conflicts with badgers are not an unusual occurrence and they have become more common as the population has grown. As I discussed last week a new report from the Mammal Society found that there are twice as many badgers as there were 20 years ago and estimates the population at more than 550,000.

The mere existence of human civilisation brings us into constant conflict with wild animals. We build roads and houses on their habitats, create and maintain agricultural landscapes in place of what was there before, and compete for resources. No-one thinks twice about poisoning or trapping rats and mice which would otherwise make our homes unhealthy and unpleasant. No one campaigns against the huge annual cull of wood pigeons that would otherwise devastate our crops. No one campaigns for the 'rewilding' of London to recreate the estuarine marshes that must once have supported a vast array of species.

In order for our society to exist we have to displace wild animals. That does not, however, mean that we must not be mindful of the welfare of individual animals, or of the status of individual species, which brings us back to the lane in Suffolk. Badgers are one of the most protected species in Britain. That protection does not relate to the status of the species which was never threatened and is now extremely numerous. It relates to justified concerns about the welfare of individual badgers that were the subject of cruel activities such as badger baiting.

Moving, or even culling, badgers that are in conflict with humans for instance by undermining a road that local businesses rely on is not, however, an animal welfare issue. As a society we accept that killing is not, by definition, cruel. Otherwise we would all be vegans. It is how you treat an animal and for what purpose that defines cruelty. By rejecting the possibility of managing, including humanely culling, individuals of a populous species that are in conflict with people we are moving the debate from one about animal welfare, to one about animal rights.

The question in Suffolk becomes not about the welfare of badgers, but whether badgers have rights that outweigh the interest of the humans they are in conflict with. We need some common sense on this issue. As it stands the council claims to be restricted by the terms of Natural England licences which do generally restrict any management of badgers during the potential breeding season. The sett will be fitted with one way entrances preventing the return of badgers in July, but work can only start to repair the road 21 days after the last evidence of badgers using the sett. This means that the work has not been scheduled until at least September.

Frankly this is madness. No one would accept being told that they would have to wait months to poison the rats in their house or to shoot the pigeons eating their crops. There would be a simple solution if this happened on the continent where badgers are culled and hunted in large numbers despite most European countries having much lower badger population densities than the UK. The reality is that our continued protection of some species like the badger is not logical, nor does it protect the welfare of individual badgers or the status of the species. Such protections are based on 'rights' randomly bestowed on species which have become iconic because they have good PR, or have become part of a wider political debate. This inconsistency is unhelpful both in terms of practical wildlife management and respect for the legitimacy of the law. That is why we believe that one of the few uncontroversial benefits of Brexit will be the opportunity to review wildlife law and create a logical, consistent approach to legislation governing the management and welfare of wild animals.

Tim Bonner
Chief Executive
Follow me at @CA_TimB