No, it's not over Syria....
"British activists fight to stop culling of beloved badgers" by Anthony Faiola | Washington Post, September 15, 2013
TREBOROUGH, England — Britain’s raging Badger Wars....
Their mission: disrupt a government-backed cull of an adored beast straight from the pages of English children’s literature.
In the magical world of ‘‘The Wind in the Willows,’’ Mr. Badger was a cuddly curmudgeon with the wardrobe of a proper country squire. But in the real world, farmers here say, his kind have bred like ill-tempered, supercharged rabbits since becoming a protected species in 1973.
As badgers now run amok, they are spreading tuberculosis among cattle herds that has cost farmers and the British government a small fortune. A cull, advocates claim, is the only real solution.
That kind of talk from leaders and such scares me.
When will the cull to be turned on humans?
But the notion of Mr. Badger at the wrong end of a shotgun has touched a deep nerve in this green and pleasant land, where the English maintain a near-obsessive attachment to picture-postcard countryside.
In a country where even the coolest hipsters regularly skip out of town for a little bird watching or just a ‘‘ramble’’ across emerald hills, taking aim at the badger has sparked an uproar that is claiming almost as much television airtime, Internet space, and newsprint here as the civil war in Syria.
(Blog editor frowns)
Related(?): British Press Back Up and Running
A website — badger-killers.co.uk — is now naming and shaming British companies and politicians that support the cull. Guitarists Brian May of Queen and Slash of Guns N’ Roses joined wildlife documentary host David Attenborough to record ‘‘Badger Swagger,’’ a rap anthem against the cull.
I'm tired of self-appointed celebrities being cited to push an agenda. Their opinion is no more important than anyone else.
In the current cull zone in western England, the operation has turned neighbor against neighbor, while drawing volunteers from cities to ‘‘Badger Patrols’’ going out each evening....
Great.
The most radical groups — such as Jay Tiernan’s Hunt Saboteurs — have resorted to an ‘‘annoy’’ campaign against pro-cull farmers, including trespassing on private property and crank calls in which activists sing a frightfully cheery badger song into the phone.
Tiernan was detained after breaking into a government research center where badger carcasses are being examined to determine how quickly they die after being shot.
‘‘We don’t have any vegan ninjas jumping out of trees, but we’re doing what we can,’’ Tiernan said as the SUV he was riding in sped through thatched-roof villages that looked straight out of Middle Earth.
See: The Lowell of the Rings
‘‘The badgers have been here since the Ice Age,’’ he said. ‘‘This is their land, not ours.’’
I would hope we can share it, but that attitude is just a bit too misanthropic for me.
Yet to the some, such as Adam Quinney of the National Farmers Union, whose family has ranched in England since the 16th century, the opposition to the cull is a classic case of city-dwellers with a romanticized view of the country.
Last year, about 28,000 head of cattle had to be sold to the government at reduced prices because of bovine tuberculosis, which officials said is spread by badgers. Cull supporters note that the spread of the disease rose in the 1990s, after badgers got more protections.
Activists say a humane solution would be a vaccination campaign to root out TB in badgers.
Then some pharmaceutical will be benefiting!
Officials have dismissed that option as too expensive and probably ineffective.
Still, it might help certain intere$ts.
Good thing it's not another Mad Cow scare.
--more--"
I guess they sealed their own fate.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: U.S. Military Saving Endangered Species
