A Royal Pardon for the Badger.

This week we have seen the weather return to something resembling normality, sunshine and the nights creeping out further and further into the fullness of springtime. 

We are into the second week of the trout fishing season and the river meadows are full of lush grass giving off the most fantastic heart stopping emerald green beauty that you only do really see in April.  Blossom in the hedgerows, birds’ busy nest building and rearing their young, it is truly a magical time.  New life and new beginnings. 

We have got quite a few nest boxes around the house and in the garden but an amusing incident my wife noticed this week on how a very disgruntled Blue Tit was getting more and more agitated by the visits of the postman.  On closer inspection of Jackie’s concerns we found that the Blue Tit in question was nesting in the post box and was seemingly getting thoroughly cheesed off with the bombardment of mail, mostly junk that was coming their way and disturbing them almost on a daily basis.  Without wasting any more time and to try to gain parity of the situation my wife decided to make a sign for the post box saying quite simply, “Blue Tit in residence, please put mail in the bag by the side of, thank you.”  Ingenious, I thought. 

The fly fishing season started on April 1^st and finishes September 31^st. The excitement of the start of each season is as great now as it was when I was a ten year old.  Then, the only excitement that could compare to a day’s fishing was when I rolled up my sleeve and delved my arm into a barrel of sawdust for the annual village fete, Lucky Dip.  I just didn’t know what exciting gem or dull, boring object I was going to draw for myself.  As much like fishing then as it would be today for each visit to the river I never know what bounties I am going to extract from it.  The uppermost constant is, a day’s fishing which is filled with a beauty and the overriding irresistability of being out and about amongst nature at her most prolific time of the year.  Skylarks that high up in the sky you cannot see them but their song from the heavens can melt away almost all of your day to day problems.  The Lapwings, Plovers, Peewits, whatever you like to call them show off so flamboyantly in their aerial court ship displays and so nonchalantly disguise pathways back to their secret ground nests in the hope that their feigning of injury will throw their predators off track away from their eggs and young. 

The Moorhens, the Swans, the Ducks and the Kingfishers, all busy, busy, restocking their countryside with their regeneration of young to keep the countryside as full and as wholesome tomorrow as we all see it today. 

As I sit on the bank of the river listening to the flow of water race over a few boulders on its way to a lazy meandering bend I see a Heron stood on one leg just past the bend, almost in a trance waiting, for that one fish.  It is noticeable how the Heron fishes where the water is slow rather than trying to fish where the water babbles along at speed.  As I watch, I think of the Badger cull that is going to once again wreak havoc in parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset and would like our own Owen Paterson, our Environment Minister and DEfRA to be a little more like the Heron, to make policies and determine their course of actions in quieter waters than make ill judged, adhoc judgements in the rapids.

The future, having seen and listened to the evidence on combatting Bovine TB is with vaccination. 

I was somewhat saddened and disappointed to hear our Princess Royal’s views as she described to BBC Country File that in her opinion gassing is the most humane way to exterminate Badgers that could be a threat to a cattle herd.  In reality, the most humane way of dealing with Badgers and cattle alike is vaccination.  Of course, this requires a lot more nouse and by its sheer nature, more forward thinking, but anything to spare us all, not least the Badger from the atrocities that were unleashed upon him in 2013 can only be of benefit to nature and conservation and the whole countryside in general. 

Prince Charles has done an awful lot for nature and conservation over the whole of my lifetime and without doubt is a great ambassador for nature, and not just this country’s conservation but the world conservation. I feel sure that the Princess Royal too shares a lot of his views.  I doubt very much that the Princess Royal will ever read anything of the nature that I write about, however, I humbly beseech the Princess Royal on behalf of the British Badger to grant the ‘Hard Man of the Woodlands’ a Royal Pardon, for we, as a nation, simply do not possess the beauty in such numbers as we can afford to shoot, snare, poison or even gas one more solitary soul of them.

Watch my short film of a Badger out for an early evening stroll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqoX3tjQIM8&feature=youtube_gdata

 Daddy Cool out for an early evening stroll

A Politician’s Expense to The Badger

In a week that has seen some of the worst air pollution on record, an industrial type of smog blowing in from the continent mixed with Saharan dust blown up from Africa, the country has been in a constant haze for almost a week.  Thank goodness the situation has righted itself over the last couple of days with a south-westerly breeze blowing the problem somewhere else. 

This week we have also seen an embarrassed government still trying to cope with the expenses scandal that has rocked Westminster to its very foundations.  All thanks to the incredible investigative journalism of the Daily Telegraph bringing the whole seedy business of MPs expenses on second homes in the capital and such like out into the common domain where the public can digest all the information that has come out over the last few years and judge the honesty and integrity of our MPs and Parliament for themselves. 

Good news this week, the government has abandoned its planned expansion of the Badger Cull as a tool to reduce TB in cattle, but much to my sadness, the pilot culls will continue but there will be no independent oversight to assess their future performance.  This I fear can only be bad news for the British Badger.  The independent monitors who on the collation of all the evidence had stated ‘the Badger Cull of 2013 had failed.’ It now seems most convenient that those monitors are no longer needed.  Strikes to me they are wanting to shoot the messengers as well as the Badgers. 

But listening in to all the ins and outs and the tooings and froings of British politics there seems to be something fundamentally unsound about the whole business.  Maria Miller apologising for her behaviour regarding her expenses in a personal statement to the House of Commons, after MPs rule that she must pay back £5,800, and yet our Prime Minister stands by her and she is still in her Cabinet post.   On listening to the Conservative Chairman, Grant Chaps on a Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman, he didn’t seem to think that there had been too much wrong doing and everyone should get on with their day to day business of running the country as normal.  However, in the real world the one that most of us dwell in, if we had embezzled monies from an employer or customer by mistake or otherwise I do not think a thirty second apology would cut us much slack. And yet, the Badger cull is going to go on regardless in the Gloucestershire and Somerset culling zones despite the overwhelming evidence that the killing of these animals will make very little to no difference to Bovine TB in cattle herds. 

A moral compass in society is a position that any government, whatever their colour, strives first and foremost to achieve.  It is achieved on respect, integrity and above all else, honesty and fairness.  Being able to preach as well as listen.  But sadly, so very often in British politics you are left miserably underwhelmed and totally disfranchised with so much that comes from the House of Commons. 

Other news, my Badgers are doing exceptionally well.  The Coopers have made two appearances this week up at my Badger sett and I feel sure that the Badgers welcomed their visit with as much enthusiasm as the Coopers gusto in getting there on their cross country and rough terrain, invalidity buggy. A fact that still astonishes me. We have seen visits from Dini the Fox and a Roe Deer buck who also seems to be keeping a close eye on the sett.  There seems to be a competition between the pair of them on who gets to see the baby Badgers first. 

Simple things you might think but to me, it is nature doing what nature does best, looking after its own, showing ingenuity, tenacity, integrity and a basic down to earth honesty of what you see is what you get.  A programme of learning of which some of our politicians would find enlightening and most beneficial.

Watch my short film of a Young Roe Deer Buck, a Badger climbing a tree and a fleeting visit of a Barn Owl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7a4Pq1sC6g&feature=youtube_gdata

A Young Roe Deer Buck keeping an eye on the Maternal Badger Sett hoping to be the first one to espy the new Badger Cubs.

A Badger's Mothering Sunday

Another year, another Mother’s Day.  Glorious sunshine is now bathing this part of The Cotswolds.  A stunning morning, with the accompaniment of Philosonic sound of bird song. Almost as if it is nature’s harmonious way of rejoicing to each and every mothers’ smile in every Mother’s Day card she opens and each gift that she unwraps across the length and breadth of this glorious nation of ours. 

Last night we started off the Mother’s Day proceedings with a very enjoyable meal at a local restaurant.  As I sat at the table, gazing round at my family and  listening to the conversation between my daughter Sophie and Sam my son, I honestly think I could remember every Mother’s Day that we have every celebrated as a family.  Amazing, quite amazing how the conversations over the years have gone from nursery school small talk, the concerns of friends and relationships in the playground, worries of not handing in homework on time, concerns over exam results along with the blight of facial acne right up to last night’s conversation which was all about the missing Malaysian airliner. A sobering, cruel reminder of the fragility of life.

 Throughout all my family’s ups and downs, my family being like any other, the saying goes, ‘Lives that aren’t messed up now and again is a sure sign that life isn’t being lived.’  But the one constant overriding total joy of the whole ‘Mother’s Day' business is that she is the best person to have on your side, her love is totally unconditional, unwavering and without parallel. 

Always a great source of amusement to me is when Jackie, my wife, Sophie and Sam’s mother, puts something up on facebook that Sophie and Sam think is so cringe worthy that their cred will be gone forever.  In reality these instances only last a short time and within a few hours we are all seeing the funny side. 

A mother’s job is never really done, there is always the niggling, nagging voice, ‘If I had done this or if I had done that,’ but on every decision a mother ever makes, there is never an occasion where she waivers from having the child’s best interests at heart. 

Please watch my short film on a mother Badger on the eve of Mother's Day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo_Q1obwbsY&feature=youtube_gdata

A Badger looks out on Mother's Day Eve.

A Budget Not For the Badger

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxQDRcduakg&feature=youtube_gdata

Female Badger at my Badger sett simply enjoying life.

Tony Benn, Badgers and the Belligerence of Power.

Encouraging news out of Parliament this week and very pleasing to see the government lose 219 votes to 1 on future roll-outs of the Badger cull. Although this does not necessarily mean this government will take any notice of the fact that generally speaking, the general public and the majority of MPs can see no real mileage in this futile, unscientifically proven debacle of an experiment.

Another nice turning point this week is, I finished my stone walling around a Badger sett and woodland area leaving it a lot more camouflaged and generally an awful lot safer than it was a year ago.  But sadly now I hear that the Hunting Act is under immediate threat with the government planning an amendment which would affectively bring back the cursed past time of hunting.

You would think, having come through a relatively mild winter, food banks being more rife in this country than ever before in my lifetime, the plight of our youngsters with job opportunities being so far and few between that half of them are in the position of despair and full of hopelessness long before their 22^nd birthday, and the best way this government chooses to address these real serious problems in our society is to appease the very few at the top who think it is in some way advantageous to this country to annihilate all our badgers and foxes.

The real sad news for me this week was on hearing the passing of a great British political icon, Tony Benn, whose integrity and honesty and generally all round goodness is probably more testimony to the age the man grew up in rather than the shoulders that he was rubbing up against over the last 25 years in The House.  I am not saying one always agreed with what Tony Benn said, but one thing was never in any doubt whatsoever, the man honestly believed every single word he uttered. 

His glory days of the 70s, when our British press were branding him one of the most dangerous men in Britain over his stance on nuclear war heads. You stand back and when you really look at the arguments of the day, Tony Benn was certainly not all wrong. 

Billions upon billions of pounds have been spent on weaponry that no one can or would ever use. 

His arguments of selling off the country’s silver, privatisation, the belligerence of power and wealth in the hands of so few was never very far off the mark.

His diaries are left as an historical insight into this country’s workings since the end of the Second World War, 1945.  They will be dipped in and out of by social historians for time immemorial. 

Whatever your politics or views there is so much of what Tony Benn preached that is as relevant today, probably more so than in the days when they were originally spoken.

I listened last October to an interview he gave to the BBC. On answering one of the interviewer’s questions, he replied, “my mother once said to me as I was entering politics, that if you believe in something that is right, and you honestly believe that it is, then you must see it through, but equally if there are policies that are inherently wrong and you honestly believe that they are, you must fight to make them right.”  The advice that Tony Benn was given by his mother all those years ago sums the man up most accurately, for Tony Benn, whether you agreed with him or not, he honestly believed most sincerely in all of his preaching’s. 

Wildlife and the late Tony Benn for me have an awful lot in common.  They both stand for what is honest, just and generally good for the country and instead of being knocked and put down they should be held in the highest esteem.

My humble advice to this government is, before we waste any more money and time on killing things that enhance life we should be devoting all of our time, sparing no effort, leaving no stone unturned in trying to solve the issues of the day that blight people’s lives on a daily basis.  Giving hope over hopelessness to our millions of youngsters who just haven’t had the same chances as we’ve all had.  Giving dignity and care to our elderly and trying to make food banks and help to the poorest of our society a humanitarian right rather than the ‘cap in hand’ hand out which is so disturbing to witness. Investing more in the infrastructure that we already have up and running rather than waste the money on ripping up the countryside with HS2 and building up our sea defences, dredging rivers and doing everything we possibly can so that we do not see such devastating scenes in future wet winters that we have all witnessed this winter.

Massive challenges that require ingenuity, tenacity and integrity.

This week has seen Dini the Fox evermore patrolling the maternity Badger sett. I feel sure that he is just as keen to know what is happening below ground as much as I am.  He comes and sleeps around the sett all day relinquishing charge on the drop of darkness to old Daddy Cool.

Iconic countryside animals with the same beliefs and the same ambitions for the future as each and every one of us, to be healthy, happy and content and TO SURVIVE.

Please watch my short film of a Badger sow gathering bedding for her maternity sett and Dini the Fox on watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwmuGTWm32Y

Dini The Fox keeping watch over the Badger Maternity Sett.

Unscientifically Proven Badger Butchery.

Our Environment Minister, Owen Paterson is very keen to always point out the Republic of Ireland’s success in combatting Bovine TB.  The number of incidents has come down from 45,000 to 15,000 cases.  Southern Ireland has been culling badgers since the early 1980s and the Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson attributes these recent falls of the TB infection to the decline of wild badgers.  The science on both sides of the debate is never clearly convincing although Owen Paterson is correct when he talks of the incidents in TB cattle being down.  In 2013 15,600 animals tested positive in Southern Ireland compared to 45,000 in 1998 and these figures have been chosen specifically to champion the cause of the Environment Secretary to make the decline of TB as positive as possible.  Just one year before in 1997 there were nearly 29,000 cases and the cattle population is lower now than in the late 1990s.  The infected proportion of cattle of the whole Irish herd we could say that the rate of infection has fallen from 0.37% in 1997 to 0.25% in 2013, a far lesser impressive statistic.  The fact remains that infected animals in Ireland has fallen to an all-time low. 

The culling of badgers in The Republic of Ireland started in the early 1980s, but the evidence does not show us a consistent drop in Bovine TB cases until the 2000s.  Tracking the decline of the badger population alongside these figures is never totally conclusive but what does remain clear, culling as early as 1984 in a fairly small way compared to later years does not substantiate into scientific measures to say that the culling of badgers is in anyway helpful in the eradicating of the disease. 

The main argument in my humble opinion is, the province of Northern Ireland has never culled badgers but it has too seen an overall decline of Bovine TB in the last decade. 

Northern Ireland proves to us that simple conclusions can never be brought to the fore as scientific evidence.

The outbreak of the foot and mouth disease suspended Bovine TB testing in 2001 and many culled herds were re-stocked without knowledge of the Bovine TB status of the replacement animals.  This without doubt contributed to the increased geographic spread and incidents of Bovine TB in recent years.  This historical evidence in the recent history of the farming industry government ministers go to great lengths not to mention when they talk of the spread of Bovine TB, and for me Owen Paterson clearly goes too far when he says the Irish experience provides the clear evidence that culling in Britain is the only way forward to combat the disease.  This was also the opinion of the BBC Trust and have been so clearly biased in their reporting of the situation. 

But with all the success of the Republic of Ireland or otherwise, it is heartening to hear that their intention is to replace badger culling with badger vaccination as soon as practically possible, and the scientists of Ireland are at the very forefront on research to oral vaccination. 

With all our years of research into this problem it still cannot be categorically scientifically proven that badgers pass TB onto cattle or cattle pass TB onto badgers.  A fact that I find quite remarkable. But until such times that it can be proven that badgers are solely responsible for the rise in Bovine TB throughout the British Isles then not one more drop of badger blood should be spilled on such a divisive issue.

Please take a look at my short film of a meeting of badgers deep within some Cotswold woodland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppMhfWGIDJs

A group of badgers having a meeting chaired by Daddy Cool

Total Protection for the Hard Man of the Woodlands

This week I have been heartened and saddened in equal measure.  I always feel very sanctimonious in coining that phrase, ‘I told you so.’ 

Twenty years ago I embarked on a personal campaign to rid the ‘willy nilly’ use of rat poisons in and around my area of the countryside.  I suffered ridicule and various other knock on persecutions.  True blue countryside does not automatically lend itself to any enlightening facts that various practises were showing devastating consequences to wildlife.  For I had noticed through the eighties and into the nineties that I was finding more and more owl pellets coated with residues of blood which was the tell-tale sign that these owls were suffering internal bleeding.  A sure sign they were taking prey that had been poisoned. 

I arranged a meeting with my local MP, Geoffrey Clifton Brown who listened closely to my concerns but nothing readily appeared to be done. Certainly no new legislation to help stem these mind numbing acts.  So imagine my delight last week sitting down to catch up with the Channel 4 news team and seeing the great Jon Snow out and about with an owl expert in the dead of night looking for Barn owls and bringing this particular rancid subject to the attention of a lot of sitting rooms throughout the land.  And sitting there, listening to this expert, you could see Jon Snow’s love for these birds was tangible.  He listened with the interest and dedication of a school boy.  My only criticism was, the film was all too short.  For Jon Snow is the type of character that possesses the charisma to be able to keep an audience totally engaged, much in the David Attenborough mode. 

The startling and frightening statistics are that 84% of all countryside Barn owls are carry varying amounts of rat poisons within their systems.  Hardly any wonder that owls are just nowhere near as common as they used to be. 

And to add to my delight, the following night, also with Channel 4 news, Cathy Newman speaking to Tom Clarke about last year’s pilot badger cull in parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset.  The conclusion of which by all experts was that the badger cull was totally ineffective, and up to 18% of all culled badgers took far longer than five minutes to die, failing miserably the test of humaneness on all fronts. 

As I sat and listened watching the short film I was left wondering why these superb news stations had not got far more involved with these particular news stories from the word go.  It would have created a more balanced and even handed action rather than the cloak and dagger secrecy that the badger cull seemed to personify. 

Surely in this day and age living in arguably the world’s greatest democracy making the public aware of this type of atrocity is a duty to empower everyone with the knowledge, statistics and facts to enable the public to make their own judgement, to search their own souls and see the badger cull of 2013 for the shambolic, debacle, inhumane, nonsense that it was always going to turn out to be.  And the fact that worries and concerns me more than any other is that the United Kingdom’s most educated individuals who run our country were handing out misinformation on a daily basis on how these ‘magical marksmen’ could clinically finish a badger with one clean shot all the time, every time, when the reality of the situation was as far from those statements as anything could possibly be. 

The badgers behaviour, to anyone who has studied them, that once startled they go immediately to ground and to drop a badger in its tracks has got to be a heart shot.  To hit a badger in darkness is relatively easy, however, to hit a badger in the heart in darkness is always as much luck as it is judgement. 

The miserable badger cull of 2013 created a situation where badgers were shot and going to ground taking hours to die, sometimes days and this was allowed to happen to an animal that just doesn’t do any harm.

Let’s all hope that the badger cull never returns in any guise or any form and that anyone creating any nuisance or any act of cruelty to all UK badger setts is dealt with in the most stringent of ways. 

The hard man of the woodlands, the badger calls for total protection from all who wish it harm. 

This is a short film of badgers being busy and making ready for their new cubs. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg--5pG2RTU&feature=youtube_gdata

Busy busy busy, making the cubbing bed.