Badgered to Death: The People and Politics of the Badger Cull

'A thriller, whodunnit and impassioned polemic' (Patrick Barkham, Guardian)

The Baffling Inside Story of Britain's Badger Cull

Dominic Dyer explores the science and politics behind Britain's most hotly-contested wildlife policy: the badger cull.

He exposes the catastrophic handling of bovine TB by the British government, the party political manoeuvring that created the cull in 2010, and the ongoing close relationship between the National Farmers Union and the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

And he shines an unflattering spotlight on Cabinet ministers, the veterinary profession, environmental NGOs Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF, and the BBC, who, he argues, have failed to protect this large indigenous animal.

Reviews
'A vital must-read for anyone concerned about the badger's enduring place in the British countryside.' – Patrick Barkham, Guardian nature writer

'It should be read by all those battling against government policies that put money ahead of science and the environment.' Our natural world is too important to be overridden in this way. It will convince any reader how very wrong and ineffective the culls will prove to be. – Lesley Docksey, The Ecologist

'I enjoyed reading this book and I strongly recommend it to you.' If you sign up to the main message of the book, that these culls are a waste of money, a waste of badgers and at best a partial and inefficient way to reduce bovine TB then you will be hopping mad right now and reading this book won't calm you down, it will energise you. – Mark Avery, MarkAvery.info

Foreword by Chris Packham

How viciously fickle we are. We arbitrarily pick and choose which species we like or dislike, normally and sadly based on purely anthropomorphic criteria, and then either laud or loathe them paying scant attention to the realities of their lives, or ours. And once cursed and demonised that tag is almost impossible to redress. Think rat, think fox... damned for historical crimes, firmly fixed as malevolent vermin, even in our supposedly enlightened age. But as this book displays we can also be quick to destroy the reputation of our animal heroes and blight their status with bigotry and ignorance.

For many reasons we had come to love the badger, to cherish and admire it, to protect and celebrate it and of course many still do. But the reputation of this essential member of the UK's ecology has been targeted by a smear campaign which has been swallowed by the gullible and fuelled by those with vested interests. You see, in spite of all the science and all the truths that it outlines, the badger has become a scapegoat. It's been branded a bad guy and is being persecuted as such. It's a terrible shame, but like I said, how fickle, how vicious, how predictably human.

The recent, and as I write, the ongoing cull has been deeply divisive and therefore immensely destructive, not only in terms of the piles of dead badgers, but in terms of damaged relationships between the protagonists, and even within their own ranks. Bridges have been burned, reputations ruined and partnerships severed, all with disastrous consequences. As a retort the great service this book achieves is to pronounce the facts; about the animal and its life, about the science that has led to that understanding, about the welfare, moral and economic issues and about the abuse of the scientific truths which should have dictated policies in the first place.

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