Badger Management With Poison Gas

There are now more badgers in the U.K. than red fox, and there are red fox everywhere, from downtown London to the Scottish Highlands.

With a dramatic rise in the U.K. badger population -- now estimated at more than 275,000 -- has come more outbreaks of bovine tuberculosis, which can be carried from badger to cattle.

In order to see if cows can be saved by managing down badger numbers in cattle country, the authorities have decided to do a "targeted cull" of badgers over a large section of Wales. The location of the area, and the details of the cull, have yet to be decided but terriers will not be involved; instead the badgers will be gassed in their dens.

Thank God, we do not manage wildlife this way in the U.S., otherwise we would be managing our deer population with a machine-gun rather than allowing the horror of allowing them to be hunted by licensed sportsmen who put money into the economy and who help pay for science-based game management, land aquisition, and conservation.

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