Cull Obsession

Recently there seems to be an organised media campaign to kill animals, with dubious evidence for support. Only today it has been suggested that because expanding deer populations are affecting biodiversity and damaging crops, it is therefore necessary to implement a 50% deer cull. This seems somewhat overzealous, to say the least; if a natural predator undergoes population growth because it is better at surviving in its surrounding environment – even if that is to the detriment of other species – that is evolution in action. That’s the way nature works; it should not be used as an excuse for widespread killing. The introduction of a new venison market is not something I have a problem with – as a meat eater all I’m bothered about regarding food production is whether the animals have been killed humanely – but I don’t think that a new food market would justify killing off half of an animal population! There aren’t that many people suddenly desperate to eat more venison.
And this need to cull comes on top of the ongoing badger controversy. If scientific research was providing convincing evidence that a badger cull would significantly prevent the distribution of bovine tuberculosis, then I wouldn’t have a problem with it; but currently the studies are suggesting that an impact will only be made if over 70% of any badger population is destroyed (a difficult thing to achieve when they are likely to move elsewhere fairly rapidly once they realise their dens are being continually disturbed), and even then it would probably only result in a 12-16% reduction in bovine TB. Surely that isn’t a reasonable enough result to justify mass animal slaughter. Other options should be exhaustively implemented first and further studies carried out so that effective measures can be determined before rash actions are taken.