In an effort to control bovine tuberculosis, thousands of badgers have been killed. But the introduction of a vaccine may lead to a reduction in the slaughter, writes Seán Mac Connell, Agriculture Correspondent
It is hard to find middle ground in the debate on the role of the badger in the spread of bovine tuberculosis in the national herd. Those who own cattle swear that badgers play a very important role in the spread of the disease and that cattle and badgers cannot co-exist.
Wildlife groups, on the other hand, say far too little research has been done into other causes of the spread of the disease, such as the movement of cattle, contact with neighbouring herds and the use of infected slurry and equipment.
There are an estimated 250,000 badgers on the island of Ireland, and roughly 200,000 of these are are in the Republic. Already, more than 50,000 of these have been officially slaughtered since 1985 under special licence, which is necessary because the badger (Meles meles) is a protected animal under the Wildlife Acts.
The role of the badger as a constraint to the eradication of bovine TB (M bovis) was identified in these islands in the late 1980s and 1990s by scientists here, in Britain and in New Zealand.
Following the refusal of farmers in east Co Offaly in 1988 to allow their cattle be slaughtered unless the badgers were also killed, an extensive cull of badgers took place in the area. A total of 1,797 badgers were removed, 1,264 from the project area and the remainder from a buffer zone. Some 11 per cent of the badgers were found to have tuberculosis in the study, which began in 1989.
By 1997, scientists had ascertained that that the number of cattle failing the tuberculin test had dropped by 92 per cent in the project area and by 49 per cent in the control area. This sparked an instant demand from the farming community for more of the same in areas of the country where the disease levels were high.
Four more target areas were selected - Co Cork, Co Donegal, Co Kilkenny and Co Monaghan - for the Offaly-style treatment, and from September 1st, 1997, to the end of August 2002, 2,360 badgers were removed and were found to have a 19 per cent level of tuberculosis.
Across the State, when outbreaks of the disease occurred, badgers were systematically killed around the infected farms. Thousands more were killed illegally.
Farmers were known to have pumped slurry into the underground setts to rid their lands of the badger. In the 1990s badgers shot by farmers were dumped on roadways where they looked like roadkills.
Wildlife groups were particularly upset at the use of snares by the Department of Agriculture and Food in the capture of the animals and at the agreement between the Department and the farmers to appoint 75 full-time staff to control badgers three years ago.
Among those opposing the cull programme is Dublin zoology graduate Mark Stephens, who has been questioning the route being taken by the department.
"Questions have to be asked when a group of people are about to kill one-third of a population of a protected species. We have to look at all other causes [of TB] as well," he said.
He, like the Irish Council Against Blood Sports and the Irish Wildlife Trust and Badgerwatch Ireland, says that the reactor test carried out on cattle to detect the disease leaves undetected animals on the farms. He also wants to see more research in other areas, such as slurry, animal movement and fencing on Irish farms.
The groups have got renewed energy since it emerged in Britain that removing badgers from pastures can increase bovine TB in cattle rather than reduce it. The British research, published late last year, showed an increase of 22 per cent in bovine TB when badgers were culled completely in the areas under examination.
This led to the suspension of the badger cull in the experimental research programme - called Krebs in Britain - and this prompted calls here for a similar suspension and claims that Ireland was running a flawed programme.
Irish officials working on controlling bovine TB say that the number of badgers in the Republic is similar to the entire population of Britain. However, Irish badgers prefer to make their setts in hedgerows rather than in the forests preferred by the English badger, and this brings Irish badgers into closer proximity with cattle than their counterparts in the UK.
While the Department of Agriculture and Food has not stopped its badger-removal programme, it promised this week that in future culling will be strategically targeted at infected populations.
"There are no widespread removals planned for the future, such as those that were necessary in the east Offaly project or the four area projects," said a senior official in the department.
"This culling will reduce the weight of infection in badgers in areas which are known to be endemic for TB. In this way such areas will be better prepared to benefit from a vaccination strategy in the future."
It is this vaccination policy which may prove the saviour of the badger population. Extensive work has been carried out here for many years on the possibility of vaccinating the badger population and this week it was learned that major field trials are scheduled soon.
Those working on the project, both here and abroad, have found that the BCG vaccine has been the most effective tool in keeping badgers free of the disease. The main problem is getting the vaccine to as many badgers as possible to ensure they are protected from the disease. The Department of Agriculture and Food said during the week that it hoped to be in a position to start a major field trial in about three years' time.
However, wildlife supporters will be disappointed by the news that the vaccine will be used only where the native badger populations have a low infection rate.
"Vaccine will not work, or at least is very unlikely to work in heavily infected populations," said a department spokesman. "The only way of addressing existing heavily infected populations is by way of culling and, hopefully, in due course, this will be followed by vaccination of the new immigrant population."
He added that the current culling programme was targeted at infected populations of badgers and was primarily confined to about 20 per cent of the land area.
People such as Mark Stephens, however, want to know how the Department of Agriculture and Food will measure success if the cost of all activities to contain and eventually eradicate tuberculosis is the loss of so many badgers in the same period.
He and the wildlife groups want a conservation programme put in place to run alongside the programme and refuse to accept that it is necessary to kill so many badgers to control the disease.
The Wildlife Trust is particularly concerned at the continuing attacks on badger setts by farmers in areas where badgers would appear to present no danger to the cattle population.
Veterinary inspectors say the control and spread of the disease is complex and concede that the current test does leave some infected animals behind in herds. However, a study of 488 herd breakdowns involving two or more reactor animals found that buying animals that may have been infected at the time of purchase was implicated in 22.6 per cent of the breakdowns.
Residual infection due to failure to identify and remove cattle infected during a previous breakdown was indicated to be the source of up to 22 per cent of breakdowns.
"However, an alarming 68.7 per cent of breakdowns were clearly associated with the recent occurrence of the disease on contiguous holdings and/or with badgers captured on the farm," said research published in 2000.
With no foolproof way of preventing badgers from moving from farm to farm, the animal will continue to be the main suspect in the spread of the disease as long as the numbers of reactor cattle continue to drop when the badgers are removed.