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Giving natural justice to wild nature |
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I am reminded every time I walk past a badger sett – as I did in an ancient woodland a few days ago – that Britain doesn’t do anything to deserve its wild nature, and certainly not those native wild species supposedly protected by law, but which still suffer from continuous persecution. Popular culture would say that if fox hunting with hounds, now banned by law (1) was the perverse bloodlust of the privileged posh, then badger-baiting was the perverse blood sport of the twisted proletariat. However, it’s more complex than that. Badgers were perceived as vermin as far back as the Tudors, when the government of Elizabeth I introduced legislation in 1565 - the Preservation of Grain Act - that put a bounty on the badger of a shilling a head, three times more than any other animal except for the equally persecuted fox – “for the heade of every foxe or graye 12d“ (2). Graye, like brocke, was another name for badger (3) a nocturnal animal that was also a beast of the chase, being hunted with hounds at night, as well as being persecuted by gamekeepers for fear of plundering game birds’ nests for chicks and eggs, and even killed for its meat and skin (4). The Cruelty to Animals Act 1835 put paid to the barbaric hunting of badgers with dogs, and proscribed baiting and fighting (5) but it would be a series of legislative acts during the period 1973 to 1992 - the Badgers Act 1973, the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (WACA) the Badgers Act 1991, the Badgers (Further Protection) Act 1991 and the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 - that finally sought to curb the relentless killing, sett digging, hole blocking and snaring, whether it be by landowner, farmer, developer, hunter or sadistic blood sport enthusiast. We regulate human behaviour to give protection to wild nature because it is morally right in the face eventually of our revulsion at persistent persecution. It is a mark of a mature and principled civil society that gives natural justice to wild nature. State sponsored slaughter of badgers in England Even in spite of this legislation, the number of reports of illegal persecution received by the Badger Trust in the last year from the public, badger groups and partner agencies, such as the RSPCA and the League Against Cruel Sports, stands at 500, with 36% of those reports being for Sett Interference; 23% for Baiting; 14% for Unlawful killing and Hunting; 10% for Snaring; 6% for Shooting; 4% for Poisoning; and 7% for other infringements (6). This depressingly common occurrence of illegal badger killing, which does not seem to be diminishing at all, pales into insignificance by comparison with the scale of the state sponsored slaughter of badgers in England - 10,886 shot or trapped and killed between August and October 2016 (7,8) - and may even have increased under the cover of this culling program. The state-sponsored cull, ostensibly for control of transmission of a disease from badger to cattle (tuberculosis, TB) (9, 10) began in Somerset and Gloucestershire in the autumn of 2013, with 1,879 badgers killed (11) raising many issues about the ecological consequences of removing one of our largest remaining native predators (12). A total of 615 were killed in the second year of the cull in 2014, followed by 1,467 in 2015 when a third area, Dorset, was added with a licence extending for four years to 2018 (13,14). In 2016, the fourth and final year of the culling program in the original two areas, the cull was expanded to a total of 10 areas across Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Somerset, the seven new areas receiving a licence extending for four years to 2019 (15) and so it is not surprising that the slaughter in 2016 was nearly three times that of the combined total of the first three years (10,886 versus 3,961). Even before that devastating ramping up of the culling had started, Natural England (NE) announced last year that it had received 29 applications or expressions of interest for additional badger control licences, covering areas ranging from 135 km2 to 655 km2 (with the average area being approximately 330 km2) and adding the counties of Cheshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire to those listed above, but it refused to give any further information on these applications or expressions of interest (16). NE is authorised to issue such licences under Section 16 (3)(g) of the WACA (17). It thus had sought comments on any significant impacts that may be relevant, or any information that it should have been be aware of, when determining these applications, based on the guidance that had been issued to it by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in late 2015 (16, 18). In reading that guidance, I was surprised at the scope of the criteria and requirements that NE had to use in their appraisal of applications. It suggested a considerable investment of time and money in the development of those applications for badger cull licences, and it made me wonder just who must have bankrolled them, since it seemed unlikely that individual farmers were putting their hands in their own pockets without any support from farmers unions or DEFRA? Amongst the criteria in the guidance, there had to be 90% of the land within the application area either accessible or within 200m of accessible land, and thus every landowner within the proposed cull area would have had to have been contacted for assent to access by the killers. In addition, "reasonable measures" had to be put in place "to mitigate the risk to non-participating farmers and landowners of a potential increase in confirmed new incidents of TB in vulnerable livestock within the culled area and in the 2km ring surrounding the culled area; and consider whether any measures are needed to protect the interests of any non-farming interests that may be affected by badger control". It struck me that the former was an indication of the science that suggests culling doesn't work in reducing incidence of disease transmission because of the perturbation effect of badgers dispersing more widely into cull areas (19). I suspect the latter, in fact all the risks associated with the cull (and see (20)) will have been disregarded by the applicants, which is why it was a key part of the need for a consultation - "an opportunity to comment to raise material issues about how you might be directly affected by the activities carried out under a badger control licence" (16). Thus NE were doing the work of the applicants for them on the mitigation required! Also, we would have had to rely on the applicants having notified all landowners within the proposed culling area. If some had refused to participate, would the applicants then have notified them that they would have an opportunity to comment, and when and where? If you weren't in the cull area, and were thus not contacted, how would you have known about the requirement for mitigation, and whether it was effective? How could these people have used the consultation, when they would not even have been aware that it impinged on them? How much trust could we have had in all this? The secrecy that there was behind all this just showed what a nonsense it was, and how an allegedly "evidence based" organisation like NE could collude in an anti-science, anti-democratic activity. It gets worse because proposals to extend badger culling in licensed areas beyond the four years originally planned have now been published (21). Under these proposals, out for consultation until 10 February 2017, a licence would be granted to enable culling to continue each year for a further five years. The aim of this supplementary badger control is to safeguard the alleged disease control benefits from a completed licensed cull through preventing the recovery of the badger population following the four-year annual culling by “keeping the badger population at, or below, a level consistent with that achieved by the end of that cull” (22). Presumably, as is the way of these things once they have started, further five-year licence period renewals will likely follow. A determined species population control policy It is at this point that you have to consider whether a determined species population control policy for the badger is masquerading as an alleged disease control. While acknowledging that the badger is not an endangered species in Britain, and that there is a reservoir of bovine tuberculosis infection in wildlife, the Mammal Society (23) dismisses the quantitative significance of badgers and other wildlife species (such as deer) as agents of infection (and see (24)) and asserts that the method of transmission of the disease between wildlife and cattle is unclear. The Society, however, is clear that “badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to solving the problem in the UK”. Thus you have to ask yourself why this culling is being pursued when it lacks any evidence of effectiveness (25). Why are the farming unions, Countryside Alliance and the current DEFRA administration so wedded to the cull that they are not above misrepresenting information in self-interested ways that are not objective? (26) An explanation lays within the constraints imposed by legislation. The Protection of Badgers Act 1992 makes it illegal to wilfully kill, injure or take a badger (Section 1 (27)) and although there is a pretty wretched get-out in the exceptions to this in the Act if “action was necessary for the purpose of preventing serious damage to land, crops, poultry or any other form of property” this defence does not apply if it was apparent that the person should have applied for a licence beforehand (Section 7 (27)). There is nothing in the Act that equates to an ability under law to generally control the badger population. However, there is a provision under licence to kill or take badgers for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease (Section 10 (act))(Note that at least one DEFRA document cites Section 10(2)(a) e.g. (18) as is shown in the original enactment from 1992 (28) but it is now Section 10(1)(g) in the current version of the Act (27)). So, blame the badger for a disease in cattle, polarise the issue by making it an argument about economic interests in farming, be resistant to change in farming practise that would reduce disease transmission, and seek to get population control of badgers on the back of alleged disease control. Has anyone ever asked you whether you approve of this state sponsored slaughter of badgers? Don’t you want more of a say on the principal of this killing of a protected species, rather than just commenting on the proposals for guidance on licences for culling, or the licenses for supplementary culling? It is the case that a public consultation was conducted between December 2005 and March 2006 on whether or not to introduce a cull of badgers to control bovine tuberculosis (29). It received nearly 50,000 responses of which only 4% were in support of using a cull of badgers as part of the strategy, with 95.6% opposed (30,31). The eventual decision by the Government at the time, based on reports from the Environment and Rural Affairs select committee and the Independent Scientific Group on cattle tuberculosis, was not to go ahead with a cull as it was judged that it would not be effective, but instead to set up a bovine tuberculosis partnership group with the industry to develop a joint plan for tackling the disease (32,33). However, every consultation since a change in Government in 2010, and in 2015, has been on the basis of a presumption for culling (eg. 18,22, 34,35). It has thus all been about a regime that gives free rein to the prejudice of intolerance, as it almost always is with wild nature (36). Farmers just don’t want badger setts on their land because they aren’t allowed to disturb them, nor legally kill badgers. It shows yet again that the enforced co-existence of wild nature with farming that characterises Britain does not work. It is a fallacy when it is only farming interests that are heard, and not that of wild nature. How impoverished are we that we let our Government get away with killing badgers even though it is a protected species? What is this protection for – what is it worth? If ever it was needed, this state sponsored slaughter of a protected species is a hugely significant caution to us for the resistance to and subsequent persecution that will face the reinstatement of former native species that are protected under the Habitats Directive, such as beaver, as well as the translocation of extant species given protected status in the WACA into greater parts of their former natural range, such as pine marten and wildcat. I have noted how hard it will be for the Scottish Government to row back from the situation where they did not discourage lethal control of beaver before it decided to give them protection, and that there will be a wholly mistaken presumption by farmers that they will have a legal right to routinely control beaver numbers within a statutory framework that is supposed to give them strict protection (36). But we are not alone in this wilfulness to ignore species protection when it suits us. I have pointed to the systemic practice of managed hunting of wolves in Sweden as a means of population control that is in breach of the Habitats Directive and the strict protection it gives to wolves, which led to infringement proceedings by the European Commission, and a warning that Sweden may be referred to the European Union (EU) Court of Justice (37). Finland is courting similar displeasure from the European Commission through its recent program of a “flexible” approach to hunting its protected wolves that is openly described as population management (kannanhoidollisen) as evidenced by calls from Finland’s environmental group Nature League to the Commission to intervene (38,39). The hunting is carried out on the premise that reducing total numbers will inculcate a greater tolerance in the Finnish people to their presence, and thus reduce illegal killings (40). You might wince at the extent of the cull, which took out 55 from a population total of 290 grey wolves during the 2015-2016 hunting season (41) with the aim of another 53 animals over the next two hunting years (42). Norway, while not a member state of the EU, is bound by the Bern Convention and the strict protection it affords the wolf, but in spite of this Norway’s Environment Agency planned recently to cull more than two-thirds of its wolf population, 47 of an estimated 68 wolves (43). The context of the culling was to prevent future damage to cattle and reindeer. It sidestepped the strict protection by asserting that there were no other means of protection than lethal control, and that the extent of the culling of wolves would not be harmful to the population's survival. Fortunately, 32 wolves were reprieved from the cull when the Climate and Environment Ministry received legal advice that said that there was insufficient evidence of documented damage potential of livestock and domesticated reindeer in the territories of these 32 wolves, nor had sufficient efforts been made to avoid or mitigate harm (44). Thus, in the case of those wolves, there was an insufficient basis for exemption from strict protection under the Bern Convention, and they could not be culled. What is this protection for – what is it worth when these Scandinavian countries can play fast and loose with the strict protection afforded to the wolf under the Habitats Directive and the Bern Convention? What is worse, if this was not bad enough, is that this population management of a strictly protected species is against the backdrop of a zero tolerance as well in the statutory reindeer herding areas of each of these countries, where any presence of wolves is eradicated. Sweden and Norway restrict the presence of any wolves to zones that are away from the reindeer herding areas, and turn a blind eye to the illegal slaughter of any wolf that wanders into a reindeer herding area (37,45-47). At least Finland had the honesty to have sought an exception to giving any legal protection to wolves in its reindeer herding area (37). You can see the result of this intolerance of wolves in reindeer herding areas in Scandinavia by the absence of any family groups in them (see Fig 2 in (48)). This gives out a bad signal that reindeer herding is more important than the lives of a native carnivore, and indicates the stranglehold that reindeer husbandry interests have on policy for large carnivores in these countries. This zero tolerance probably also explains the hardening of hearts that allows population management of wolves in the areas away from the statutory reindeer herding areas. There is an assertion on the official Finnish Large Carnivore (Suurpedot) website that there was wide participation in the development of the national wolf management plan that came up with this population management by hunting (49) but if you delve deeper, on the website of the official Finnish Centre for Game (Suomen riistakeskus) which supplies information to hunters, workshops and local events were held with people living in wolf territories because they have “the experience-based vision of the kind of measures that are needed for better co-existence with the wolves” (50). Pragmatically, that would be the reality if only self-interest was at stake. Thus in the research survey conducted as part of the preparation for wolf population management, reindeer herders and people who owned hunting dogs were most against wolves, and people in rural areas other than eastern Finland were not enthusiastic about maintaining an increasing wolf population (51). However, several conservation organisations and environmental authorities did not accept hunting as a means of population management, instead arguing for an increase in wolves and greater wolf awareness and tolerance as the best way to promote the coexistence of humans and wolves. That their wishes were ignored shows the misbalance there is when the aspirations of civil society, as evidenced by the natural justice that should be afforded wild nature through its protection, are over ridden. Embarking on a new, more mature approach If we are ever to have the hope of seeing a widespread presence of beaver, or any hope of reinstating wolf or lynx, then we don’t want to have a parallel situation where farming here can dictate the presence or absence of a protected species. I have used France before as an example of how a country has negotiated the return of wolves (52) and I was hoping that I could point to France again as a country that was embarking now, on a new, more mature approach to its wolf population. More than 100 wolves have been shot under various national plans since 2004, the exceptions from strict protection allowing quotas for lethal control of individuals to prevent serious damage to livestock or in the interest of public safety (52). However, last summer, the Secretary of State for Biodiversity, with the approval of the Minister of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, committed France to a new, prospective evaluation process (démarche prospective d’évaluation) on the situation of the wolf that would have two parts: a gathering of collective expertise in order to have the scientific data that would continue to be the basis of action; and the development of a strategy in consultation with all the partners concerned for how the wolf population will be in 2025-2030 (53). The process started well, when in the Secretary of State's speech, she recognised that increased shooting year on year could not be the answer, nor should an increase in shooting be a consequence of an increase in population because, as she was aware, everyone knew that public opinion did not accept it (53). A first round of workshops on three themes – analysis of wolf attacks and methods of livestock protection from predation; wolf habitat selection and future dispersal; and management tools for the future - took place in Lyon last October, and where participants were welcomed by the Préfet for Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Rhône, who invited workshop participants to “rely on objective elements to conduct their work, using scientific and technical expertise and to leave aside the passionate reactions that may arise” (54). The process, however, seems to have unravelled, with FERUS, an organisation set up to protect large carnivores in France, refusing to take part in workshops on the third theme, nor going to the meeting in Paris last November that would discuss the conditions and limits from which the hunting quotas are set, the means by which exceptions to strict protection have been managed (52). FERUS did not want to be "complicit in the policy of the state shootings" of wolves that it believes are contrary to the international obligations of France, and moreover it believes are ineffective in reducing predation (55,56). Then the second round of the themed workshops scheduled for December appear to have been postponed (57) and I can find no information on a resumption of the prospective evaluation process other than a briefing on results so far that is to be given to Secretary of State for Biodiversity at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris on 18 January 2017 (58). It would seem that even with the best of intentions in this new approach to wolf, it cannot satisfy the needs of civil society if it doesn’t honestly revisit its use of exceptions from strict protection under the Habitats Directive. What hope have we of reinstating former native species? Over six years ago, I bemoaned that for too long, the nature conservation industry has dominated the approach in Britain towards nature protection, and that voices of dissent from that consensus were rare (59). It seemed to me that the problem was that we don’t have a sense of a national system of protected areas in Britain that are unexploited by agriculture, as they do elsewhere, and where wild nature has refuge, safe from persecution. In addition, the national strategy by default was pretty much to leave everything to the decisions and actions of that conservation industry (60). I described then a few deliberative processes that I had used in support of a recommendation to the Scottish Government to hold a summit process on wild land, and which could be the basis for developing a national strategy for protected areas in Scotland (61). It seemed to me those six odd years ago that properly capturing the public will for wild nature through a good deliberative process was a vital general principle, because if we were to “carry on as we are, then the children of the future in Britain will only know wild nature as a field full of sheep” (59) I would say now, with the change in Government, that the domination of agricultural interests, and a conservation industry supine in the face of that, even abetting it when it brings in money for them, has become the arbiter of policy on nature protection, of what wild nature can live and what dies. The culling of badgers for population control is but one signifier of this. You can be certain that this domination will be cemented in place by the long-trailed 25 year environment plan being developed by DEFRA with the Natural Capital Committee providing advice (62). This 25-year environment plan will form the basis for environmental policy in England. Depending on what you read, DEFRA should have published a framework of this plan last summer, with the plan itself delivered by the end of last year (62). Apparently, DEFRA sent a letter to “stakeholders” in early July last year that its 25-Year Environment Plan would not be published before the end of 2016 and, in addition, the framework for the Plan that was expected last summer would also not be published (63,64). DEFRA explained that the original timings of the framework and the subsequent Plan “did not take into account [Britain’s] decision to leave the EU. As a result we will not be publishing the framework this summer or the plan by the end of the year” (63). Then DEFRA announced last October that the “engagement framework” for the plan was to have been published last autumn (65) with at the same time DEFRA’s Secretary of State addressing the slippage from the summer by saying that she hoped to be “consulting quite soon on a framework that sets out the considerations with some quite open questions for all stakeholders—ranging from families and schools to farming groups, conservationists, the Defra body, arm’s length bodies and so on—to be able to feed back what their best thoughts are about how we aspire to see our environment in 25 years’ time” (66). Given that the Secretary of State said that consultation would continue for a few months, the vagueness she gave of the timing of delivery for plan itself of “the middle to autumn” of this year seemed more than likely, and now seems optimistic (66). Did you have any role in developing the framework? Well, some people have had a privileged input, such as those attending a workshop on the plan at the National Nature Improvement Areas Event in London on 23 February 2016 (67,68) and the minutes of the Natural Capital Committee meeting last July tell us that planned regional workshops were going ahead across England to engage local areas with the plan – “Attendees include a wide range of local interests, including local councils, key NGOs, Local Nature Partnerships, Local Economic Partnerships, water companies. In addition, local staff from Defra agencies”(69). Were you aware of any of these regional meetings? Did they take place? Did you go to any of them? The minutes of the Natural Capital Committee meeting last November tell us that the Framework is now fully drafted, but must complete the government clearance process before publication (70). Perhaps the latter is why none of us has yet seen the framework. I wrote previously in relation to the grip that the conservation industry has on nature policy, that there is the question of pre-emption, that the public are consulted on documents drawn up beforehand by the experts of the industry, so that the public’s response rarely gets a chance to re-shape them after they have been formed (59). As I noted of the deliberative processes I described, real participation in a democracy starts with a clean sheet, the role of experts being as advisers if they are called upon by the public. This gives value to the opinion of civil society, and is a counter to the self-interest that is so destructive of wild nature. It is unlikely that this framework for the 25-Year Environment Plan will have any content that enunciates a fundamental principle for the existence and protection of wild nature. However, we owe it to the lives of the thousands of dead badgers, and that of many other birds and animals that suffer from routine persecution in agricultural landscapes, to demand through every means possible – including the eventual consultation on the framework for the 25-Year Environment Plan - that the fundamental principle of the existence and protection of wild nature becomes a policy of natural justice for that wild nature. Mark Fisher 12 January 2017 (1) Hunting Act 2004 CHAPTER 37 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/37 (2) Preservation of grain Act, 8 Eliz. 1 c.15, 1565. Quoted in the footnote to pg. 467 under the entry for Game, in Burn, R. (Woodfall, W.)(1805) The Justice of the Peace, and Parish Officer. Vol. II. Twentieth Edition (3) See Note 2, Pg. 209 in Promptorium Parvulorum Sive Clericorum: Dictionarius Anglo-Latinus Princeps, Volume 1. Soc. Camdenensis, 1843 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=G8c_AAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (4) Lovegrove, R. (2007) Silent fields: the long decline of a nation's wildlife. Oxford University Press. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q-RJGvDR9HcC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (5) Cruelty to Animals Act, 1835 [5 & 6 WIlliam IV. c. 59] An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Several Laws Relating to the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Animals, and the Mischiefs Arising from the Driving of Cattle, Animal Rights History and to Make Other Provisions in Regard Thereto (6) Badger News – New Online Edition. Badger Trust 1 December 2016 http://media.wix.com/ugd/0c3b82_6de068d03196440b921eea0fdbc66c2d.pdf (7) Summary of badger control monitoring during 2016. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, December 2016 (8) Annex A1 Data from the cull areas in 2016. Summary of badger control monitoring during 2016. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (9) The Strategy for achieving Officially Bovine Tuberculosis Free status for England, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs PB 14088 April 2014 (10) Further measures to eradicate bovine TB, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs News Story 30 August 2016 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/further-measures-to-eradicate-bovine-tb (11) Response to EIRs request for information about TB testing and badger cull figures. FOI release Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Ref: RFI6493 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/323819/RFI_6493.pdf (12) Ecological consequence of predator removal, Self-willed land July 2014 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/predator_removal.htm (13) Badgers: Culls in England. House of Commons Library Briefing Paper Number 6837, 30 August 2016 http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06837/SN06837.pdf (14) Bovine TB: authorisation for badger culling in 2015, Natural England 28 August 2015 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bovine-tb-authorisation-for-badger-culling-in-2015 (15) Bovine TB: authorisation for badger control in 2016, Natural England 30 August 2016 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bovine-tb-authorisation-for-badger-control-in-2016 (16) Bovine TB: comment on a badger control licence application or expression of interest, Natural England 18 February 2016 (17) Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 CHAPTER 69 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/69?view=extent (18) Guidance to Natural England. Licences to kill or take badgers for the purpose of preventing the spread of bovine TB under section 10(2)(a) of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 17 December 2015 (Revised: reference corrected 6 January 2016) (19) Carter, S. P., Delahay, R. J., Smith, G. C., Macdonald, D. W., Riordan, P., Etherington, T. R., ... & Cheeseman, C. L. (2007). Culling-induced social perturbation in Eurasian badgers Meles meles and the management of TB in cattle: an analysis of a critical problem in applied ecology. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 274(1626), 2769-2777 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/274/1626/2769.full.pdf (20) Bovine TB: comment on a badger control licence application or expression of interest, Badger Trust submission to Natural England, March 2016 (21) Bovine TB: Supplementary badger disease control. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs 16 Dec 2016 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/bovine-tb-supplementary-badger-disease-control (22) Guidance to Natural England on licensed badger control to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis. A consultation exercise contributing to the delivery of the Government’s Strategy for achieving Officially Bovine Tuberculosis Free (OTF) status for England. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs December 2016 (23) Position statement: Badgers and Bovine Tuberculosis, Mammals Society http://www.mammal.org.uk/2016/05/badgers-and-bovine-tuberculosis/ (24) Kissing cows are to blame for bovine TB – so stop this bloody badger cull, Richard Meyer, Guardian 19 December 2016 (25) Bovine TB: Why badger culling is not the answer. Public Affairs Department, RSPCA August 2016 https://www.rspca.org.uk/ImageLocator/LocateAsset?asset=document&assetId=1232739403387&mode=prd (26) How badgers came to be persecuted – but why? Dan Lyons, Centre for Animals and Social Justice 1 November 2016 http://www.casj.org.uk/news/badgers-persecuted-why/ (27) Protection of Badgers Act 1992 c. 51 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/51?view=extent (28) Protection of Badgers Act 1992 c. 51 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/51/pdfs/ukpga_19920051_en.pdf (29) Controlling the Spread of Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle in High Incidence Areas in England: Badger Culling. A consultation document issued by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 2005 (30) Defra/PKF Accountants (2006) Public consultation on controlling the spread of bovine tuberculosis in cattle in high incidence areas in England: Badger culling. Summary of responses (31) Wilkinson, K. (2007) Evidence Based Policy and the Politics of Expertise: A Case Study of Bovine Tuberculosis. Centre for Rural Economy Discussion Paper Series No. 12. University of Newcastle http://www.ncl.ac.uk/cre/publish/discussionpapers/pdfs/dp12%20Wilkinson.pdf (32) Bovine TB. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Hilary Benn), House of Commons Debates 7 July 2008 (33) Badger Culling: TB Control Policy. 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