Burnham-On-Sea wildlife carers have expressed fears for two hand-reared badgers who appeared on a popular BBC TV show at the weekend amid moves to extend the badger cull onto land near their release site.
Gnat and Bumblebee appeared on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s BBC2 show Hugh’s Wild West.
They were filmed last year while being cared for by staff and volunteers at Secret World Wildlife Rescue centre in East Huntspill, near Burnham-On-Sea, which rescues, rehabilitates and releases wildlife that has been abandoned and injured.
Following the responsible protocol for the rehabilitation of badgers, the cubs were tested three times, a month apart, for Bovine TB and were negative.
As promised in Hugh’s programme, they were safely released to the wild last October using Secret World’s ‘soft-release’ procedure.
The land was suitable for a badger release and the landowner prepared to support feed and protect these orphans.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall filmed the pair last summer for his television programme, in which he meets up with the West Country’s nature lovers.
Now there are unconfirmed reports that the 2018 badger cull will take place on land neighbouring the release site, although Natural England are unwilling to give exact details.
Since the badgers are free-ranging animals, Secret World there is every possibility that Gnat and Bumblebee will now possibly be shot when looking for worms on neighbouring land.
The land owner has gone to great lengths to try and get Natural England to offer protection status. He has developed prototype monitoring equipment that can indicate to cull marksmen which members of a group of badgers have been tested and/or vaccinated. Natural England have refused to implement such a protection process for Gnat and Bumblebee.
Founder of Secret World and former-dairy farmer Pauline Kidner told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “We are horrified that having followed our agreed protocol, animals that we have released in a safe environment are now endangered by further badger culls.”
“With at least 10 more areas being rolled out, there is still no scientific evidence that they are making any difference at all to the incidence of Bovine TB in cattle.”
“I find it incredible that 34,103 badgers have been killed in our countryside and no one seems to care. The huge expense of culls costing millions of pounds, could be better spent resolving the cattle to cattle spread which is the main reservoir.”
