‘Shortcasts’ are short standalone audio comments and statements from conservationists, campaigners, charities, authors and members of our audience. If it needs to be said – say it here!
"It's such a sad indictment of the current way in which science is conducted and vested interests have infected our society." Ecologist Tom Langton has been looking at the scientific and legal aspects of the dreaded badger culls since 2016, and this summer represents his fifth year working on what is being described as the worst miscarriage of UK biological science for fifty years.
Tomorrow (the 22nd of July) Tom is off to London for a High Court challenge of Secretary of State George Eustice over the “Next Steps” policy, which was published in March 2020 and revealed the way in which badgers may be legally shot in huge numbers over the next five years and beyond - all the way up to 2038.
For this shortcast we asked Tom to explain a bit about the new 2020 policy and what exactly was being challenged – a challenge which, incidentally, has taken over a year of battling to gain permission for. Tom starts off with aspects of the 2020 policy in terms of what we might expect to see under the wording of the controversial new policy and the dilemma (in Tom’s words) that it now offers to those who may be invited for the foreseeable future to vaccinate badgers as long as they stand by while most of them are killed first...