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THE Department of Agriculture has admitted that it snares and kills
female badgers during the breeding season in Ireland as part of its
effort to eradicate tuberculosis in cattle. Animal welfare groups said
the practice was illegal under European law.
Snaring badgers during the breeding season runs the risk that the cubs
will starve in their setts. The Irish Wildlife Trust [IWT] and
Badgerwatch believe the practice is prohibited by the convention of
European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, better known as the Bern
Convention, which gives special protection to badgers.

Billy Flynn of the IWTsaid: We are vehemenently opposed to badger
culling. We don’t believe it is based on good science, nor that its
going to be beneficial in the long term.’

Bernie Barrett, a spokesman for Badgerwatch, said she had long
suspected that the government was killing nursing badgers in the
spring and she would now make a formal complaint to the European
Union.

‘This is appalling. Apart from the fact that killing badgers is a
complete waste of taxpayers money and actually encourages the spread
of TB among cattle, its also inhumane’, she said. ‘To kill a mother
and leave her young to starve is unacceptable.’

The agriculture department says 3,865 badgers have been killed this
year as part of its strategy to eradicate bovine TB. Last year 5,589
were culled, an increase on 2005 when 5,171 Badgers were slaughtered.

Conservationists want the government to shift the focus of its TB
campaign towards improving diagnosis, controlling cattle testing
movement and more testing.

Britain abandoned plans to introduce a similar badger cull earlier
this year after government scientists concluded that badgers disturbed
by culling actually dispersed more widely, spreading the disease to
cattle and other badgers further afield.

In Ireland the number of cattle with bovine TB has been falling, apart
from a slight increase in 2005. Unlike Britain and Northern Ireland,
the republic does not test cattle before allowing their movement, a
practice it abandoned in 1996.

Rates of bovine TB have fallen by 40% in Northern Ireland since it
introduced measures controlling cattle movements in November 2004.

Mary White, a Green TD in Carlow, said: ‘Previous governments have
spent millions on eradication and still we have bovine TB – it si
unfair to pick on the badger.’ Research to develop a vaccine to
inoculate badgers was positive, she said.
John Mooney
© The Sunday Times