UK Nature and Environment

391 readers

55 users here now

General Instance Rules:

No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia.
No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users.
Do not share intentionally false or misleading information.
Do not spam or abuse network features.

Community Specific Rules:

Keep posts UK-specific. There are other places on Lemmy to post articles which relate to global environmental issues (e.g. slrpnk.net).
Keep comments in English so that they can be appropriately moderated.

Note: Our temporary logo is from The Wildlife Trusts. We are not officially associated with them.

Our autumn banner is a shot of maple leaves by Hossenfeffer.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Kim

GreyShuck

Tory MP Calls For More Wild Animals To Be Killed (plantbasednews.org)

submitted 8 months ago by GreyShuck to c/nature

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A UK Conservative MP has said “all wild animals” should be culled in response to conservation groups calling for an end to the badger cull.

Richard Drax, MP for South Dorset, made the comments at a debate on farming in the House of Commons. He said that culling badgers has been proven to help stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) between farmed cows.

“Can I suggest that rather than talking about stopping culling on badgers and to introduce some other form, that all wild animals have to be culled,” he said. According to Drax, this is because animals such as deer and foxes have no natural predators in the UK, causing their health to “deteriorate.” He added: “We don’t want to wipe them out, we just simply want them controlled.”

More than 210,000 badgers have been killed since the cull began in England in 2013, according to the Badger Trust. The Badger Trust says the cull has not been effective in containing bTB, but the government disputes this.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] HumanPenguin 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Theoretically. And if we abolished farming of cows. Sure that might be possible.

But logically 2 issues.

1 ) current laws require cow herd owners to test for TB if it is discovered in the area. And destroy the whole herd if one is found.

While many small farms keep cows to graze conservation land. Eg my tiny narrowboat is moored by such land now. So I can see a sign to this effect.

Cows still represent a cost to keep. So all those farmers will also tend to sell dairy to help fund the conservation land.

This also leads to the question that in some future where vegan laws or will prevents farming cows. How will motivation to fund keeping healthy cows be handled.