A Few Notes For A Tuesday: Funding, Conservation (the unpopular stuff)

 

Interesting question the other day that had me laughing for an hour. "What sort of grants or financial support do you get in your badger work?

You have to laugh.

Ahem. In the UK there are no grants for carrying out badger work. The only money goes to the morons who go out "culling" badgers and they do quite well out of it. Decades of experience in the UK counts for nothing because the "nation of animal lovers" is anything but.

I was reminded yesterday that it was 20 badger sett areas I had saved from developers over the last ten years (I could swear it was 12 but then I was reminded of the locations ). That was me working my posterior off contacting developers, DEFRA, land auctioneers and anyone else in the "interested party" category. I do not go out seeking publicity -in fact I annoy people by turning interviews down- and although I have tried to raise interest in donating to the work after a few years I gave up. The Badger trust does NOT fund groups (cash flow is one way).

At one point I was trying to get dead badgers necropsied as post mortems could tell us a lot about urban badgers. I was told an outright lie three times (I have those emails) that "We cannot carry out badger post mortems due to Health and Safety (TB) regulations" -the pathologist who told me that  was carrying out badger PMs at the same time. Considering the Fox Post Mortem study was officially suppressed I should not be surprised -100 badgers PM and zero bovine TB would show how unscientific the cull is.

Outside the UK the badger is recognised as a "scapegoat species" -it is even noted in non-UK written books. Dogma sells books for idiots.

Ask any badger group -or the Badger Trust- WHY badgers survived hundreds of years of melecide while foxes (old types), wi9l;d cats and various other species went into extinction and I am betting the actual answer will not be forthcoming. Years of reading natural history books, journals etc from the 18th century on led me to find out why.

For me the main point of the work has been the safety and conservation of the animals I do work on. Saving them is rewarding enough although it does not pay the rent!