alex.m.thompson
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Publications
  • Photos
  • Research
  • Collaborators
  • Blog

my thoughts on science

Hedgehogs and badgers

5/28/2015

0 Comments

 
As part of my job I have to read a newspaper every day. I check to see if there are any dodgy science stories, if there are any major misrepresentations of research and collect articles related to ongoing projects. Currently I'm on the Times, not as bad as the Telegraph and with less hype than the Daily Mail. In the last couple of weeks I've seen some stories about British wildlife that have made me sad and slightly despondent with the current state of our wildlife and how we treat it.

The first was reporting on the huge decline in the number of British hedgehogs. These lovable creatures, favourites among children's cartoons and Green Cross Code adverts, are an integral part of our culture. But they have suffered a huge decline from their number of around 30 million in the 1950's to less than a million today. They are declining at a rapid rate and Micheala Strachen has warned that they could be extinct within 10 years. However, the treasure of British children's wildlife TV is over blowing the reality of the situation. But just because they wont be extinct within a decade doesn't mean nothing should be done. The habitat of these nocturnal foragers has become highly fragmented, making it difficult for them to search for food. Decreasing pockets of habitat are never good for a species, as smaller areas can support fewer individuals and if dispersal is difficult it can lead to reduced genetic diversity. Smaller populations are also more vulnerable to stochastic events that can lead to local extinctions. All-in-all, not great.

But hopefully a bit of publicity will do the hedgehog some good. People don't tend to like it when cute, charismatic species are doing badly. With this one on our door step, it should be easy to encourage people to make the minor alterations to their gardens, such as cutting small holes in fences, that can de-fragment their habitat. But hedgehogs might be the victim of the perceived dullness of British nature, and people caring more about animals in distant corners of the globe than declining species like starlings and cuckoos that live within our shores. I'm a victim of this, I went of to South Africa to study exotic species rather than any one of the plethora of our native fauna. In South Africa everyone wants to study their native species and are intensely interested in their conservation, they take pride in their local biodiversity. This is starting here in the UK, with the growth of programmes like Spring and Autumn Watch, but we need to do more to educate and engage.

The second story was about badgers...oh the poor badgers. I wont write too much as I have written stuff about badgers before (and sadly not much has changed!). The Times ran two stories, one about DEFRA ignoring the British Veterinary Associations calls to stop the cull because it's not been shown to be an effective or humane way of killing bagders (LINK £). The second was an opinion piece by the Deputy President of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters (LINK £). Ms Batters' piece argues that culling badgers is the same as culling any other species of animal, but this misses the point. Deer are culled because they damage vegetation and prevent the growth of trees, by culling deer there are less of them and so less damage is caused. The number of deer killed is probably (I'm not an expert on deer ecology, so this is with pinch of salt) highly correlated to the amount of damage caused to vegetation. Badger are a completely different kettle of fish. They are culled to reduce the spread of bovine TB, and a very extensive, long-term and well carried out study looked into the effect of culling badgers on the spread of TB. If you cull but not to a high enough level then you actually make the spread of bTB worse. All of the evidence that has been gathered points to this course of action being one that will not achieve its aim. So the argument put forward doesn't work: one type of culling we know works and the other we know doesn't.

The argument made by people like the NFU's deputy president assumes that the opposition to the badger cull is an emotive, bunny hugging, tree-hugging hippie one. It's not. It's one based on the science and evidence. All the major scientists have said that it won't work and have huge problems with the way the cull is being evaluated (no longer independent and with marksmen collecting their own data). I just hope that someone, somewhere in DEFRA decides to look at the evidence, because this course of action could make the problem of TB in cattle worse.


0 Comments

    Author

    I am a behavioural ecologist, my main interests revolve around familial conflicts and their resolutions. However, my scientific interests are fairly broad.

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Archives

    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012

    Categories

    All
    90
    99 Percent Invisible
    99pi
    Africa
    Alien Species
    Allee Effect
    Altruism
    Amazon
    Andreas Wagner
    Anthropocene
    Apostle Bird
    Arabian Babbler
    Attenborough
    Babbler
    Badger Cull
    Badgers
    Banded Mongoose
    BBC
    Bee
    Big Bang Fair
    Bighorn Sheep
    Biodiversity
    Biological Control
    Biology
    Biology Letters
    Bird For Britain
    Birds
    Birthday
    Black Sparrowhawk
    Blogs
    Book
    Book Review
    Breeding
    Brood Parasitism
    Brown Tree Snake
    Burying Beetles
    Butterflies
    Butyric Acid
    Camel
    Cane Toad
    Chemicals
    Chernobyl
    Chimp
    Chronotype
    CITES
    Climate Change
    Cod
    Collaborations
    Color
    Colour
    Colour Vision
    Common Misunderstandings
    Communication
    Competition
    Conference
    Conflict
    Conservation
    Conservatism
    Conservative
    Cool Papers
    Cool Research
    Cooperation
    Crime
    Crows
    Cuckoo
    Dad Media
    Dailymail
    Dalai Lama
    Darting
    Darwin
    Darwin's Finches
    Deception
    Deception Africa
    Decision Making
    Deer
    DES
    Dieter Lukas
    Disney
    Diving
    Documentary
    Dominance
    Drongo
    Eavesdropping
    Economics
    Education
    Elephants
    Epigenetics
    EU
    Evil
    Evolution
    Evolutionary Approach
    Extracurricular
    Fear
    Fennec Fox
    Filming
    Fish
    Fittness
    Fitz
    Football
    Foraging
    Fork Tailed Drongo
    Fork-tailed Drongo
    Free Radicals
    Future
    Gastranaut
    Good Genes
    Ground Squirrel
    Group Living
    Grouse
    Guardian
    Hands
    Hedgehog
    Hero
    Home Advantage
    Honeyguide
    Hornbill
    Hot Birds
    Human
    Human Impact
    Human-wildlife Conflict
    Hummingbirds
    Inbreeding
    Intelligent Bird
    Interesting Research
    Intrasexual
    Invasive Species
    Isbe 2014
    Ivory
    Kalahari
    Kardashian
    Kenya
    Kids
    K-index
    Koala
    Language
    Larks
    Learning
    Long-term
    Male-male Competition
    Male Tenure
    Mantis
    Mating
    Meerkat
    Meta-analysis
    Mice
    Misconceptions
    Miya Warrington
    Mongoose
    Moths
    Mysogyny
    Natural Selection
    Nepotism
    Nestling Growth
    New Papers
    New Research
    Niche
    NO2
    Nuclear
    Old Boys Club
    Olfaction
    Ornithology
    Overfishing
    Owls
    Oxidative Stress
    Parental Care
    Peer Review
    Percy FitzPatrick Institute
    Pest Control
    Pesticides
    Phd
    Phd Comics
    Phenotypic Plasticity
    Pheromones
    Pied Babbler
    Pied Babblers
    Pied Crows
    PLoS One
    Poaching
    Podcasts
    Politcians
    Political Views
    Polymorphism
    Poor Reporting
    Population Change
    Population Decline
    Population Dynamics
    Precautionary Principle
    Public Understanding
    Raccoon
    Radiolab
    Raihani
    Random
    Raptors
    Reciprocity
    Red Deer
    Referendum
    Regulation
    Research
    Resource Dispersion Hypothesis
    Robin
    Rum
    Running
    Schools
    Science
    Science Education
    Science In The News
    Scientific Method
    Scimitarbill
    Scotland
    Seagull
    Sexism
    Sexual Conflict
    Sexual Selection
    Shrikes
    Signalling
    Singing
    Smell
    Sociality
    South Africa
    Speach
    Spring
    Stealing
    STEM
    STEMtech
    Stuff You Missed In History Class
    Stuff You Should Know
    Suppression
    Syntax
    SYSK
    Tamarisk
    TBT
    Teaching
    Temperature
    Theft
    Theory Of Mind
    The Telegraph
    The Times
    Tigers
    Tim Peake
    Top 10
    Tories
    Trees
    Uganda
    UK
    Urban
    Urban Animals
    Urbanisation
    Weaver
    Wheel
    Wild
    Winning
    Wood Wide Web
    World Cup
    World's Sneakiest Animals
    Wrinkle
    Youtube Channels
    Zebra Mussel

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.