The Off the Leash Podcast 3.5

04/03/22 • 53 min

In this episode of The Off the Leash Podcast, Charlie Moores and Dominic Dyer look at Dorset Police’s baffling and frankly bizarre decision to halt an investigation into the poisoning of a White-tailed Eagle found dead on a Dorset shooting estate; at an FOI request from Wiltshire Hunt Sabs that found that an astonishing 53 police officers chaperoned the notorious Avon Vale Hunt at one meet in Wiltshire in early March but still couldn’t see assaults on sabs taking place in front of them; and we will look briefly at a rather clever suggestion put forward by Wild Justice about the shooting of Woodcocks. We also name our Heroes and Villains (which once again features the divisive and unrepresentative Countryside Alliance)
But we begin with a look at newly-released figures from Defra which state that at least 33,687 badgers were slaughtered in 2021 as part of its ongoing campaign to appease the dairy industry; petition updates; and Dominic's thoughts on how shifting government priorities might see the Animals Abroad Bill shelved...

Badger Trust | Badger Trust outraged as latest cull figures reveal record proportion killed by inhumane shooting
Off the Leash | Interview #23 Tom Langton and Dr Mark Jones | Badger Culling Research
The Guardian | Cabinet row as plan to ban fur and foie gras trade scrapped by PM
Raptor Persecution UK | Poisoned eagle in Dorset had 7 x lethal dose rodenticide in its liver
Wild Mammal Persecution UK | The Rule of Law
Off the Leash | Interview# 22 Wiltshire Hunt Sabs March 2022
Wiltshire Hunt Sabs FOI Tweet
Wild Justice | We ask for changes to the Woodcock shooting season
Off the Leash | Shortcast #59 Charlie Moores Ban the Shooting of Woodcocks
The National | North Wales PCC accused of ‘prejudice’ over hunting review

Badger Trust | Badger Trust outraged as latest cull figures reveal record proportion killed by inhumane shooting
Off the Leash | Interview #23 Tom Langton and Dr Mark Jones | Badger Culling Research
The Guardian | Cabinet row as plan to ban fur and foie gras trade scrapped by PM
Raptor Persecution UK | Poisoned eagle in Dorset had 7 x lethal dose rodenticide in its liver
Wild Mammal Persecution UK | The Rule of Law
Off the Leash | Interview# 22 Wiltshire Hunt Sabs March 2022
Wiltshire Hunt Sabs FOI Tweet
Wild Justice | We ask for changes to the Woodcock shooting season
Off the Leash | Shortcast #59 Charlie Moores Ban the Shooting of Woodcocks
The National | North Wales PCC accused of ‘prejudice’ over hunting review

Previous Episode

Interview #23 Tom Langton and Dr Mark Jones | Badger Culling Research

“Badger culling is not going to work as a method of controlling disease in cattle and should be abandoned immediately and permanently.” Dr Mark Jones., Born Free Foundation
Charlie Moores in conversation with Tom Langton, a conservation ecologist with involvement in High Court judicial review of decisions surrounding badger culling policy in England, and veterinarian Dr Mark Jones, Head of Policy at Born Free.

In mid-March, open-access research by Tom, Mark, and Dr Iain McGill - a veterinarian and Director of the Prion Group – was published in Vet Record, a peer-reviewed medical journal in the field of veterinary medicine.

Titled “Analysis of the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the high-risk area of England, 2009–2020”, the research found that “Analyses based on Defra published data using a variety of statistical methodologies did not suggest that badger culling affected herd bTB incidence or prevalence over the study period. In 9 of 10 counties, bTB incidence peaked and began to fall before badger culling commenced.” and concluded that “This examination of government data obtained over a wide area and a long time period failed to identify a meaningful effect of badger culling on bTB in English cattle herds.”

In other words, bovine TB was already starting to fall before the government-sanctioned slaughter of a protected species had begun, and that the deaths of more than 140,000 badgers has had little effect on how much bovine TB is in England’s dairy herds.

“Analysis of the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the high-risk area of England, 2009–2020 Vet Record Volume 190, Issue 6 (open access research)
Born Free Foundation Website and Facebook page
Born Free Foundation Twitter feed
Born Free Foundation Badger Culling
Badger Trust New scientific study reveals that badger culling has had no effect in reducing bovine TB in cattle (18 March 22)
The Badger Crowd on Twitter

Next Episode

Interview #24 Duncan McNair | Save the Asian Elephants

A conversation between Charlie Moores and Duncan McNair, founder of Save the Asian Elephants or STAE.
Duncan is a prominent corporate litigation lawyer and was Chair of the highly-influential 2013 McNair Inquiry and Report which was commissioned by the RSPCA and called for greater commitment to higher welfare standards for farmed animals. Its recommendations were unanimously approved by the Council of Trustees of the RSPCA the month after the Report’s publication and resulted in the RSPCA Assured Scheme.

More recently Duncan has been regularly invited to address All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Animal Welfare and on Endangered Species regarding the plight of Asian elephants In 2016 he addressed a large audience at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on STAE’s policies, a presentation described by the Chairman as “dramatic and shocking.”

In 2017 Duncan was part of a small, key group representing 220 charities and MPs in presenting a letter to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street demanding abolition of the UK ivory trade. A proposed ban was announced the same year. In 2018, Duncan and STAE launched a petition on Change.org to End the Cruel Treatment of Elephants in India which now has over 1 million signatures and is still being signed today...

All of which might lead to us thinking that the remaining populations of Asian Elephants are now safe, ivory imports are banned, and the cruel ‘breaking’ of these highly intelligent and gentle animals so that tourists can ride them has ended...

The world doesn’t work in such a linear fashion unfortunately, and Asian elephants continue to decline – they are classified as Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), have declined by an estimated 50 per cent over the past 75 years, and the remaining 20,000 to 40,000 Asian elephants left in the wild are restricted to just 15% of their original range.

Ivory and elephant welfare are very different issues of course, but again it’s not particularly good news. Here in the UK, the Ivory Bill which received Royal Assent back in 2018 has been held up numerous times and doesn’t come into force until June this year and the government has now paused progress of its much-lauded Animals Abroad Bill which was intended to include both bans on the trade in hunting trophies that threaten the conservation status of species abroad AND the domestic sale and advertising of experiences overseas like elephant rides. Why paused? Well, while the Bill had reached the inquiry stage where it would be scrutinised, the Inquiry Committee has decided that scrutiny cannot continue until the Bill has been published by the Government and the Government are not able to confirm a date of publication. In other words, at the moment it is deadlocked and going nowhere...

Which is incredibly frustrating for STAE, and led to Duncan and a coalition of campaigners including Claire Bass of HSI and Ian Redmond publishing a letter in The Guardian on the 1st of April which began “We are concerned by reports of the government abandoning its manifesto commitments to an Animals Abroad Bill”.