By 2019 I had been in touch with Avon Wildlife Trust (AWT) a number of times, especially since forming BBG in 1994 after two years of finding Avon Badger Group under Mike Collins had gone defunct. Sadly I can find nothing online about Mike or the ABGs work and the only surviving member I did find was in her 80s and told me, regarding the ABG work/results, that she was "proudly taking them to the grave".
That does not helop badgers.
Anywway, AWT never bothered responding to results of wildlife surveys or other data. and that still applies.
In 2019 they posted this on their website regarding "bovine TV" (they did correct that further down.
Saving Avon’s Badgers | Avon Wildlife Actors Trust
If you’re out for a summer’s evening walk or drive, you may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a black and white creature scurrying across a lane or skirting the edge of a woodland, its stocky form and short legs moving quickly. It will be a badger of course – a shy, nocturnal mammal and a wonderful animal to spot.
Badgers, like many wild animals, have plenty of myths and folklore attached to them, including the idea that if a badger walks across the path you have just walked on, you’re in for very good luck! And badgers have long been featured in literature, associated with wisdom – think badger in The Wind in the Willows who deals firmly with the mischievous Mr Toad, and the loyal Hufflepuffs in Harry Potter’s Hogwarts who have the trusty badger as their house emblem. And badgers and the setts they live in have been protected by law in England and Wales since 1992 when The Protection of Badgers Act was passed by parliament, so they hold an important place amongst our native wildlife.
But these animals have been at the centre of much debate over the last decades. The Government’s strategy to halt the spread of bovine TV – a disease which affects cattle and causes immense hardship and devastation for farmers – has led to many thousands of badgers being killed due to the fact that badgers, like other wild animals, also suffer from bovine TB. Research however, shows that they are not the main way cattle become infected and that in fact, cows spreading the bovine TB bacteria to other cows is the key problem in herds becoming infected.
Avon Wildlife Trust – alongside the movement of 46 Wildlife Trusts across the UK – is opposed to the culling of badgers and we’ve this week started vaccinating badgers for the first time to protect badger families from the disease. We’ve started at a small scale, vaccinating badger families of adults and cubs on a woodland site at one of our nature reserves. Over the next four years, we want to extend across other nature reserves and work with other landowners and farmers to vaccinate more badgers across larger areas of landscape.
We’ve taken this step as a way to help tackle the problem of bovine TB in the Avon region and demonstrate an alternative to the cull policy – a safe alternative which is cost-effective, and which saves our wild badger populations in years to come. Several other Wildlife Trusts in different parts of the country have been running successful badger vaccination programmes for some time and research from trials carried out showed that three quarters of badgers which had been vaccinated had a reduced rate of infection.
Our aim is to continue the work we’ve started this week and play our part in helping to find solutions to the problem of bovine TV whilst ensuring Avon’s wild badgers can thrive into the future.
To find out more about our badger vaccination work and the funding we need to do more please go to avonwildlifetrust.org.uk/saveourbadgers
Now, I have left that link as previously an "error" message was showing but I kept trying as knowing locations of badger clans it might help vaccinate the poipulation -even though there is no real threat from Bovine TB . I sent emails asking for information on the vaccination programme. I mentioned this to two people from AWT at the Wilkd Summit in September and they were very vague on the subject. They were "shocked" when looking at the Badger Death Register entires. I did give my details and they promised to poass this along.
Nothing.
Today I tried the website again and clicked the link and:
"Oops. Sorry, this page couldn't be found. Here are some pages we think you might like instead."
Nothing but birds, clean water but mammals particularly foxes and badgers ...did you guess "nothing"? I was told by both people at the AWT stand "we work under Bristol city council" and we know how BCC feels about wildlife and the environment -it doesn't.
Since moving to Ashton Vale in 1994 I carried out surveys and on each occasion AWT was not interested. This all seems odd and thirty years on I still wonder wehat it does.
Stoats, hedgehogs, deer of various species, foxes and badgers -in a City and County with all of these mammals why are we not promoting education about them or letting people know they are here at least? It seems hedgehogs get some press when it might attract attention but badgers and foxes? No.
We need wildlife groups and trusts to educate and make it clear to people that we are on the verge of losing hedgehogs, the fox population has dropped by an estimated 60% anbd the badger cull has resulted in 300,000 official deaths and a population under threat. Sitting back and doing nothing will not help unless your mind set is that you can take the grand children to see what foxes, hedgehogs and badgers looked like "when we still had them".
Imagine trhe answer you wil;l have to give when the grand kids ask "What did you do to try to save them?"
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