Badgers

[Collector Inspector]

I saw this with interest

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-01/b ... ht/4290028

Sadly, I do not seem to have any locally so do you have a Badger in your back yard?

If you do, will it be culled to protect a Seagull or two?

B

[Taspiper]

Eats, roots and leaves?

[Keith.P]

This debate has been going on for years.
I have seen more Badgers dead(road kill) than alive, even though I did watch a group of Roe, and fallow deer passing though yesterday, a lot nicer than the vermin Muntjac.

[Horsley-Anarak]

Sadly, I do not seem to have any locally so do you have a Badger in your back yard?
B

You don't want the ones that have TB in your back yard, even worse when they give your dairy herd TB.

I have never seen so many dead badgers on the roads, some days you will see half a dozen.

There are loads about, how many do you want Bruce? I could pop a few road kill in a Jiffy bag for you, that would make your airport sniffer dogs forget what drugs smell like.

TB in your dairy herd is no joke, they all get the bullet, and you are not allowed to inoculate cows against TB in the EU.

I am not sure there is an easy answer, so I have stopped drinking milk, and started drinking more Fosters

H-A

[Charles uk]

Do they cull anything near you Bruce?
Was Rottonest (excuse spelling) one of the islands where all the mammals were culled?

[The Tinker]

We have opossums They have TB and we Kill them off but it does not stop TB. Opossums also kill our native trees, bloody pests.

[Collector Inspector]

Thanks for the replies.

Rottnest Island........no culling has ever been done.The population of quokka have always been protected. They virtually died out on the mainland but are coming back in our Southwest.

I can only speak of Western Australia re culls. Usually in our Kimberly, Northern Interior and Gascoyne regions. Chiefly, imported animals in order of destructiveness to the environment are:

Camels

Horses

Feral Pigs

Donkeys

Feral Goats

The camels are shockers! They destroy watering holes and bore station infrastructure. They get very good at ripping a bore apart with their teeth depriving grazing stock and wild birds. They destroy our dog fence and what was the Rabbit Proof Fence.

Kangaroos sometimes get to plague proportions but the poor things perish naturally as it has always been for them.

I do not think that any of the above carry disease like your badger (Was mentioned in the news clip)......just destructive and unfair competition for flora and fauna and the cattle industry in general.

I think that Queensland have a need to cull the Fruit Bat which is a native there.......they carry the Hendra virus,bad for horses and has killed a few people as well. Hugo may be able to clarify that?

B

[Seaduck]

The one thing that stuck in my mind, is one of the groups against the cull is called 'Think Badger'... or T.B. for short

Now I understand that both Badgers and Cows can both contract TB

I know that cows get 'Bovine TB'

The question I have yet to find an answer too is:

Do cows contract TB from Badgers which then mutates becoming Bovine TB to survive in its new host OR are they two completley different streins and they're using the Badgers as a scape goat

Neal

[Chilli Dog]

Badgers are attracted to the dairy cow feed troughs . The TB is transferred to the feed or pasture as is the case from weeping lesions surrounding the lymph node of the badgers foreleg . I thought most of those in the UK suffered from mad cow

[Charles uk]

I entered my mad cow for a saggy boob contest, she swept the floor with them!

[Chilli Dog]