Sir David Attenborough: 'Why do they spend a lot of time and money doing careful scientific studies and then simply ignore the results?' Photograph: Martin Godwin
Sir David Attenborough has condemned the UK government for "ignoring" scientific evidence after the controversial badger cull in Gloucestershire was more than doubled in length on Wednesday.
The night-time shoots had killed less than half the minimum numbers required in the initial six weeks, prompting experts to warn than the failure risked increasing tuberculosis in cattle, rather than curbing it.
"Why do they spend a lot of time and money doing careful scientific studies and then simply ignore the results?" asked Sir David, the UK's best known naturalist. He told the Guardian: "They decided to have a six-week [cull] and when they don't get the result they want, they want to extend by eight weeks. It is simply not believing in the science."
The granting of the extension by Natural England (NE) will be a relief to the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, and the National Farmers Union (NFU), who argue that culling badgers is an essential part of curbing the rise in bovine TB, which led to 28,000 cattle being slaughtered in 2012 at a cost to taxpayers of £100m.
But Paterson now faces the prospect of a high court legal challenge from the Badger Trust and the disapproval of the nation's largest private landowner, the National Trust. Dame Helen Ghosh, the trust's director general and until 2010 permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), had questioned the "scientific rigour and credibility" of the pilot culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment