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MONTH: October 2007
First conviction in Scotland for badger-baiting
EDINBURGH--Craig Morrison,
22, on October 9, 2007 became the first person to be convicted of badger
baiting in Scotland under the Protection of Badgers and Protection of
Wild Mammals acts, passed in 2004 and 2002.
Charged with nine offenses on March 29,
2007, Morrison pleaded guilty to three of them in the Kilmamock Sheriff
Court. Sheriff Seith Ireland deferred sentencing, pending receipt of witness
statements that he said "could make the difference between a custodial
sentence or community service."
"Prosecutors requested Morrison's
dogs be taken from him permanently and an order be made to ban Morrison
from keeping animals. They also asked the court for Morrison to be liable
for the £3,000 costs of housing the dogs since they were seized
from him in March," wrote Robert McAulay of The Scotsman.
Doreen Graham of the Scottish SPCA and
Ian Hutchison of Scottish Badgers praised the outcome, which came just
under a month after four men were fined for reckless behavior and illegally
blocking badger setts, but escaped convictions for cruelty and badger
baiting. Scott Collins, 19, and Greg Withers, 21, were fined £640;
Derek Kelly, 22, and Adam Lennon, 21, were fined £520.
"The Crown accepted the men's story
that they had been rabbit-hunting," reported Craig Davidson of The
Scotsman, "when a terrier belonging to Withers bolted and followed
a rabbit into a badger sett. The dog was found to have a number of brutal
injuries consistent with a fight with a badger. All four men--three of
whom had trained as gamekeepers-- insisted they had only been trying to
retrieve the lost dog."
Observed Lothian & Borders Police
wildlife crime coordinator Jim McGovern, "In an area thought to be
infested with rabbits, they didn't manage to catch one in four to five
hours. Either they weren't very good at what they are doing or something
else was going on that day."
Between the two Scottish cases, a test
of the British anti-badger baiting law ended with the October 3 conviction
of Mark Paddock, 37, of Aintree Close, Leegomery, Telford. Paddock also
said he was hunting rabbits, but was found guilty of "lamping"
a badger on December 14, 2005, based largely on images and sounds he had
recorded on his mobile telephone.
At least six other alleged British badger
baiters, arrested in January 2007, are still awaiting trial.
British badger protection acts were adopted
in 1973, 1991, and 1992, but as in Scotland, enforcement has proved difficult
due to the lack of witnesses in most suspected cases.
The badger-baiting prosecutions came amid
continued debate as to whether culling badgers is an effective tactic
in controlling bovine tuberculosis. The disease primarily afflicts cattle,
but badgers are capable of catching it from them, incubating it, and then
passing it back into pastures which have long been cleared of infected
cows. The number of cases in Britain has increased from several hundred
per year when badger protections were introduced, to nearly 20,000 in
2006.
"In the expectation of an imminent
end to the moratorium on licences to kill badgers, farmers have earmarked
areas of the country where the cull could begin, while the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is conducting four secret
trials to find which is the most effective ways of killing badgers--snaring,
trapping, shooting, or gassing," reported Jasper Copping of the Sunday
Telegraph in May 2007. But the farmers' anticipation was premature.
Within days, Badgerwatch Ireland and the
United Kingdom Badger Trust released findings that despite intensive badger
killing in the Republic of Ireland between 1997 and 2002, in Cork, Monaghan,
Donegal and Kilkenny counties, Ireland still has twice as high a rate
of bovine TB as Britain. Ireland has only 10% as many badgers as Britain
in equivalent habitat, but killed 9% more cattle due to bovine TB outbreaks
in 2006, reported Trevor Lawson of the Badger Trust.
"May make matters worse"
A month later, the Independent Scientific
Group on Cattle TB, headed by Bristol University professor of animal health
John Bourne, recommended that culling badgers "may make matters worse,"
and recommended that farmers should do more to avoid moving infected livestock.
"The report of a nine-year trial
concluded that although badgers contribute significantly to spreading
TB in cattle herds, killing the animals on a large scale would tend to
increase the incidence of the disease," summarized Independent environment
editor Michael McCarthy. "That is because individual badgers missed
in a cull tend to wander about the countryside after their social group
has been broken up, spreading the TB bacterium as they go."
"Given its high costs and low benefits,"
said Bourne, "we conclude that badger culling is unlikely to contribute
usefully to the control of cattle TB in Britain. It is unfortunate,"
Bourne added, "that agricultural and veterinary leaders continue
to believe, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary,
that the main approach to cattle TB control must involve some form of
badger population control."
National Farmers Union president Peter
Kendall rejected the Independent Scientific Group findings. "I simply
do not accept that the industry cannot devise a culling strategy that
will reduce the reservoir of TB in badgers," Kendall said.
David King, chief science adviser to the
present British government, on October 22 recommended culling badgers
in specific areas that are isolated from reoccupation by barriers such
as roads or bodies of water.
Bourne called King's recommendation inconsistent with the scientific evidence, but "consistent with the political need to do something about" bovine TB.