More badgers will be shot in Lincolnshire as the government expands its cull of the animal, despite the county being a low risk area for bovine tuberculosis.
The government has revealed that badgers will be culled in 11 new parts of England despite recently pledging to move away from culling and to expand measures including vaccination. This will allow for the legal shooting of badgers to control the spread of bovine TB.
Defra’s advice to Natural England on setting the minimum and maximum numbers of badgers to be culled in licensed areas during 2020 was published this month, covering 33 existing and 11 new areas.
It means badger culling will now be permitted in Avon, Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Lincolnshire.
The RSPCA said initial target numbers suggest that up to 70,000 badgers could be shot this year.
A potential ‘hotspot’ area was established in June 2018 after they found Mycobacterium bovis in a cattle herd in south west Lincolnshire in December 2017.
The government said that there have been three M.Bovis positive ‘found dead’ badgers identified in the hotspot.
Opposition to the badger cull
Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust said it will not allow culling of badgers on its land. After its latest campaign, over 14,500 people have written to their MPs to raise concerns about the issue.
The trust said that after seven years of badger culling, the government has “failed again to move forward with its own advice” and is expanding the culling programme into more regions including Lincolnshire.
It also believes the science used to justify the killing of thousands of badgers every year in the UK is “flawed”.
Tammy Smalley, Head of Conservation at the trust, said: “This is a staggering and deeply disappointing decision from government which will result in many healthy badgers dying across the UK’s countryside this autumn.”
Adam Grogan, Head of the RSPCA’s wildlife department, said: “We are shocked that the government is stepping up its inhumane and ineffective badger cull despite its recently announced commitment to “government-supported badger vaccination and surveillance”.
He added: “Earlier this year, the government in England gave a clear commitment to support and develop badger vaccination programmes as a way of controlling bovine TB in cattle. The proposed licensing of cull areas in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire go against this commitment.
“With Lincolnshire being in a low risk area, we wonder what the evidence is to show that there is TB in the badger population and also how it got there.”
Wildlife enthusiast and RSPCA Vice President Chris Packham also said “the badger cull is not the answer”.
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Fantasy Island Skegness has crawled into the ongoing caterpillar cat fight between Marks & Spencer and Aldi by ‘cocooning’ the Crazy Caterpillar ride in solidarity with Aldi.
Supermarket chains M&S and Aldi are currently involved in a legal battle after M&S claimed that Aldi’s ‘Cuthbert the Caterpillar’ cake infringes the trademarks of its own ‘Colin the Caterpillar’.
M&S filed a claim against Aldi in the High Court on April 14, and is suing the budget supermarket as well as demanding that Cuthbert is removed from Aldi shelves.
The company claim Cuthbert shares “substantial similarity” with Colin, and they are pledging to “protect” their Caterpillar cake from plagiarism.
Aldi, which introduced their caterpillar confectionary almost thirty years after M&S did theirs, has been posting a series of memes in response to the lawsuit, demanding that we #FreeCuthbert.
Fantasy Island, the theme park in Ingoldmells, joined in the debate with a tongue-in-cheek move, saying they will close the Crazy Caterpillar ride in solidarity with Aldi and to not offend Marks & Spencer.
The resort created a cheeky post on Facebook with #FreeCuthbert on it, truly showing which side of history it wants to be on.
It’s proved a valuable publicity move for the attraction’s social media page, with more than 4,000 ‘reactions’ to the post.
Around 15% of Lincolnshire’s adult population is now fully vaccinated against coronavirus, health bosses have said.
Lincolnshire County Council’s assistant director for public health Andy Fox said the latest figures showed just under 100,000 people had received their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine – 97,984.
Government figures on Thursday showed that officially more than 500,000 doses of vaccine had been handed out in total with 82,659 of those being second jabs – a rise of more than 15,000
Meanwhile 66.6% of the population have had their first dose – more than 425,000.
“We’re really pleased with where we are with the vaccine in Lincolnshire,” said Andy.
“We know that the NHS teams doing the vaccination has been focusing on the second dose recently so we’ve seen that go up from a few percent a few weeks ago to now we’re 15% of the adult population in Lincolnshire are fully vaccinated, which is again, really good to see.”
Of those that have received their second dose, the highest numbers are in the 80-plus age group with 36,500 people, while 17,000 75-79-year-olds are fully vaccinated.
More than 93,000 people took a lateral flow test last week. The number was expected to go down due to schools – which normally do between 40-60,000 tests alone – being shut, however, it is thought to have been balanced out by people ordering new home testing kits.
There is currently no evidence of the Indian variant in Lincolnshire, confirmed Andy Fox, while the Kent variant is now the dominant strain at 90%.
Lincolnshire’s infection rate continues to decrease, reaching 26.5 per 100,000, and now sitting below the England average of 26.8.
Health bosses are not overly concerned by small rises at district level in Lincoln, or by Boston remaining high on the league table of infection rates.
Mr Fox said the general trend continued to be moving downward.
Forensic tests by wildlife investigators have revealed the death of a bird of prey in Crowland may be linked to a criminal poisoning.
Lincolnshire Police have launched an investigation after a Red Kite was found dead on a piece of land in the area, with a member of public reporting it to the authorities.
The bird was sent off for forensic tests through the government wildlife incident investigation scheme, which concluded that indications suggest it had been poisoned.
As a result of this, Lincolnshire Police’s wildlife crime officers, as well as Natural England, the RSPB and the National Wildlife Crime Unit have carried out searches at addresses in the Crowland area.
During these searches under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, items such as banned pesticides were found, which could be linked to the poisoning offence.
Two people have been identified in relation to this and will be spoken to by officers.
Detective Constable Aaron Flint, Officer in the case has said: “Raptor Persecution is one of the UK’s National wildlife crime priorities and is taken very seriously by Lincolnshire Police.
“These offences will always be dealt with expeditiously and robustly. Deliberate killing of birds of prey is an offence which I urge the public to report if they become aware of it.
“I would like to add, that if a bird of prey is found dead and you believe it is suspicious it should be reported to the police immediately to allow an investigation into its death to commence.
“The bird may have been poisoned which poses obvious health and safety concerns if handled. Providing the police with the What3words location would be extremely useful when reporting an incident”.
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