The badger hasn't got very much going for it. It is big and shambling; it can, David Cabot reckons, attain 27 kilos, and that's some weight. It's not easy and comfortable. It lives underground, and issues at night. Nor is it handsome to look at, though you could make a case for the young with the little black stripy face. It is not an animal of which much is known, except among the experts. Many know it only as a corpse on the roads. The only cosy badger, probably, is a "gruff but loveable father figure" as the London Times put it the other day, from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: "We are an enduring lot," said Badger. "And we may move out for a time, but we wait and are patient .. . and so it will ever be." And the badger, for some superstitious reason, arouses passions. How else explain a story in the same newspaper of a slaughter of badgers on the grounds of Lord Rayleigh in Essex, where a sett, as their underground habitations are known, was blocked up, all 15 entrances, and cyanide was pumped in, thus killing all within. Is this a fear coming from the distant past, some ancient fear of the unknown? It has nothing to do with bovine TB. There is none in the area, and no campaign against the badger is necessary on that score. One of the oldest-inhabited setts in this country used to be in Woburn estate near Millisle, Co Down, the seat of Denis Pack-Beresford. Naturalists used to come to see the badgers, whose sett was on the edge of a small stream. Woburn is now an institution of some sort.
An Broc, the Newsletter of Badgerwatch Ireland for Autumn 1999, notes that the organisation sent a submission to the Standing Committee of the Bern Convention questioning the legality of the culling of badgers that is going on, and requesting that a file be opened on their complaint. Nuala Ahern, Green MEP had already lodged a complaint. They contend that the Irish Government is in contravention of the Convention of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats in several articles of the Convention. The Newsletter complains that the Government, in the matter of bovine TB should closely monitor various aspects of the cattle industry, including restrictions on the inter-herd movement and correct treatment of slurry. Well, we'll see in due course. Recent revelations of what our cattle - herbivores - have been fed, must at least raise some doubts.