Comment by Dr. L.H.Thomas MRCVS on DEFRA's England Wildlife Health Strategy
"Amongst the mindnumbing 37 pages of DEFRA speak (what an earth does "a variety of cross cutting initiatives" (para 7.10) mean?) and the plethora of acronyms - NEEG, SPIRE, HAIRS, UKZADI, to name but a few, there is the interesting proposal for a National Wildlife Disease Surveillance Partnership. Little information is given as to how it might be achieved and who the partners with the VLA might be but the aspiration seems worthy. And this largely sums up this latest strategy document from DEFRA. It is essentially an enabling report, a catalogue of worthy intentions.
Our principal concern during the consultation was that DEFRA did not appear to take responsibility for control of over-successful species per se and the report confirms this. Their concept of wildlife management seems to be largely dictated by how wildlife impacts on man with the impact on biodiversity a secondary consideration. And there is one major and significant omission from the report. Culling is entirely overlooked as a method of wildlife management. This is remarkable since without culling, populations of over-successful species such as deer and foxes would be entirely out of control. And it is significant since it highlights the fact that this Government is totally averse, for political reasons, to controlling that other over-successful species, the badger.
Dubious and untested procedures to control fertility may be attractive to research groups for funding but they cannot be expected to replace culling as the major method of wildlife management. The report however is informative in that it outlines who (those acronyms) does what in the jungle that is DEFRA. It remains to be seen whether anything useful on the ground emanates from the jungle or just a further cycle of consultations and glossy reports".
The full report may be found: on this link
