Weather across The Cotswolds is getting back to what you
might expect in early spring, bright light days and the odd shower of rain,
chilly mornings and nights. On the
whole, extremely pleasant and so welcome after such a miserable wet winter which
we all encountered.
In a week that has seen another budget from the coalition
government, George Osborne, the Chancellor looked exceptionally pleased with
himself and to be fair to this government the mess they inherited from the last
Labour government is no easy task to turn around.
On listening to some of the experts on analysing the cost
of the 2013 Badger cull they have estimated that for every Badger killed it has
cost the tax payer approximately four and half thousand pounds which I believe
is a national disgrace. Surely this
money would have been far more beneficial to the farming industry and all tax
payers if it had been used towards the speeding up of a TB vaccine for
cattle. It seems to me that there has
been a total failure by the NFU and the government to prioritise and focus on a
cattle vaccine, choosing instead to go out into the British countryside and
create mayhem in amongst our Badger population with the killing and maiming of
an animal that really has done no harm.
It has been proven that the killing of these wonderful animals does not
automatically and has certainly not been categorically proven that it affects
Bovine TB by any real measurable scientific explanation.
This week Meurig Raymond the NFU President has said that
the Welsh stand (pro vaccination) on the Badger cull is wrong and it has left
farmers fighting the disease with one hand tied behind their backs, however, in
my opinion quite simply the Welsh stance is the right stand and it has been our
British Badger who has been made the scape goat of years of incompetence and
mis-management and has left the Badger in a much worst state than having a paw
tied behind his back. It has left him
dodging lead, negotiating snares and a week by week threat of gassing being the
cheaper and an ever more likely option to be used against the Badger to kill
the sort of numbers ie; 70% of the Badger population in the Badger cull
zones. News this week of past gassing
experiments of Badgers at Porton Down a government military science Park near
Salisbury leaves me horrified and sick to the stomach.
Other news this week, the Coopers who are real stalwarts
for the Badgers have informed me that they have been totally re-charged and
energised over the winter eating many of their stews and dumplings along with
their log fires and they feel, now that the weather is drier and a tad more
clement that they are once again able to take up the baton on behalf of the
Badgers on the protective vigil of the sett.
Their invalidity, cross country buggy has been fully serviced and they
are now ready to rumble. All very
pleasing news.
Dini the Fox who has been keeping guard over the sett in
the absence of the Coopers and all the woodland Badgers will be as keen and
pleased to see the return of the Coopers to the woodland as I am.
An update this week which reassured me, that if the
Badger cull is re-launched in 2014, Mozart’s Magic Flute is still on track to
be activated at a moment’s notice by the Evacuation Specialists’.
As I walk back this morning from the badger sett, sun
shining, birds of all kinds giving that truly ‘great to be alive’ bird song
chorus, I look down the valley and I can see how the phrase was once coined, ‘God’s
own country,’ and the countryside without the Badger is a countryside without
soul.
Please watch my short film on a female Badger grooming while her mate prepares the sett.
Female Badger at my Badger sett simply enjoying life.
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