New Year - New news.

As we wade into a wet 2020, and 15 long years since this blog was started, the results of the farmer led culls of endemically infected badgers is starting to show in the amount of cattle going into Defra's mincer.

In the High Risk Area, it is dropping, as are breakdowns.

We were hearing, anecdotally of course, of long standing herd breakdowns resolving quite quickly after culling the wildlife maintenance reservoir began, but we had to wait until the mathematical modelers had fired up their machines to see a reduction of 58 per cent -[link] in cattle TB in the Gloucestershire pilot cull area. And a significant drop in the Somerset pilot cull area.

 Further analysis over the years 2013 - 17 has produced more data, reported by Sara Downs's team in Nature- (link) and the crucial paragraph, amongst the diagrams of models is quoted thus:

"The effect was strongest in Gloucestershire where the central estimate was 66% lower than in comparison areas compared to 37% lower in Somerset."

Other scattered  areas of the far South West have joined in, clearing up the decades of intransigence and political chicanery undertaken by successive governments, and reports of significant drops in herd breakdowns are coming through.

APHA's interactive TB maps show this quite starkly.

A screen grab of 2016 outbreaks in England, counted from a line due south and west of Birmingham, where the majority of the new cull areas are now in place, is pictured below.
There were 2,700 herds under restriction and a very small number of farmer led badger control areas..

And a similar screen grab showing outbreaks in 2019 has 2,137 herds under restriction. A drop of 21 per cent in herds under TB restriction.

Bearing in mind that some of these scattered cull areas had only just started their monumental clean up exercise, and that Defra are still allowing the translocation and vaccination of badgers, not to mention the opt outs of misguided people who think they are somehow protecting these over populated, endemically infected animals, that is a remarkable drop.

Particularly as only 42 nights culling per year is allowed, under very strict conditions from un-Natural England. It was never going to achieve the effect of Thornbury which was described in our Parliamentary questions, and in 2004 formed  the basis of this site.

We asked why the 8 month sett euthanasia at Thornbury had been so successful, keeping cattle clear of TB for at least a decade.

The answer was unequivocal and needs to be inscribed over the door of every building occupied by this most political of government departments, and especially the office of the Secretary of State:

" The fundamental difference between the Thornbury area and other areas [] where bovine tuberculosis was a problem, was the systematic removal of badgers from the Thornbury area. No other species was similarly removed. No other contemporaneous change was identified that could have accounted for the reduction in TB incidence within the area" [157949 - Hansard]

Keep it simple. A very Happy New Year.