The Big Badger Bash of 2012

I have managed to catch a few of the SpringWatch and AutumnWatch over the years and it was always fascinating to see the presenters interaction with the badgers. However this SpringWatch may be the last time badgers will be featured as come the autumn this first of the two trial badger culls will commence. 

A veritable army of Elma Fudds’ will descend into these cull areas for a night-time gun fest.

Who would have thought that the badger a protected species after a long battle to uplift it from its terrible past of badger baiting and abuse. 

It will now feature in a brand new blood sport of ‘Night Time Badger Shooting’; one can only assume that in this war against the badger the countryside army will be made up of Agriculture Students, Young Farmer Club members, Terrier-men (or Countrymen as they are now called) and of course people who are members of the Shotgun Conservation Club (SCC).

In the past SCC members were looking at wild goats in Cheddar or the wild boar in the Forest of Dean for possible new conservation shooting projects, but now with this badger cull in Gloucestershire and away days on Exmoor the Mecca of the blood sports killing fields.

However come the autumn AutumnWatch will be like watching wildlife in a parallel universe where presenters were so keen to show foxes, deer and badgers together with all the other diversity of wildlife in our areas of outstanding natural beauty.

Now we may see the badgers that were featured on SpringWatch now being shot on AutumnWatch and the pressure to class the fox as a pest as an aid to repeal the hunting act.

It is a great shame that this small snippet of time remaining for enjoying the local wildlife will not last much longer as this animal hostile Government puts in place the framework to undertake a mass cull of Badgers, and against all the best scientific evidence in a futile and absurd attempt to curb TB in cattle.

If we consider the view of most of the newly elected MPs into this parliament, which are in the main Career Conservatives or Tory supporting Liberals. Most will support a badger cull when presented with ‘cherry picked’ evidence; and should the Government get there way we may see next year the BBC SpringWatch program being replaced by HuntWatch, where local hunts explain their tally of ‘accidental’ kills for the season and choose the best hounds of the pack. This will be a sad day for our wildlife as culling, hunting and shooting are expanded and the countryside treated rather like a fairground attraction – stack them up and butcher them down!