Sunday 12 October 2014

A Badger’s Blood Moon.

The season of autumn now reigns supreme over this part of The Cotswolds.  The season that never ceases to delight me with its beauty.  A transformation of the newly drilled cereal fields and the changing of colours throughout the bushes and trees captivates as if by magic every morning’s and early evening’s differential of colour. A tapestry of beauty unequalled by anything else that I have ever seen outside of nature who seems to be able to trumpet it each passing month.  Throughout all the seasons and changes of the landscapes one thing is always, thank goodness, so very constant, the degree, quality of beauty and richness, so diverse in every detail is always there.  A joy most certainly to behold. 
This week the Badgers up at my Badger sett have thoroughly enjoyed their nights out under the Blood Moon.  The fullness of which, has lit up their woodland wilderness to such a degree, they  could be seen from some distance. Their enjoyment of these evenings I have witnessed once again first hand.  Their community, their loving, caring behaviour for each other keeps me in as much of a trance now as it did thirty years ago.  The Badger truly worships his environment and the environment truly worships the Badger. 
I stayed out with them every evening while the moon lit up their playground for when nights are this light, I always feel very uncomfortable for the Badger.  For nights like these, he is at his most vulnerable to the rifle.  But I am so happy to report there was no blood spilled of my Badger colony on this breath taking, glorious Blood Moon.
The government still goes ahead with the futile, brainless, devastating Badger cull.  Attacking a part of nature and an eco-system that works so scientifically beautifully against all the evidence that the killing of these black and white beasts of nature will do absolutely nothing to eradicate Bovine TB in our cattle herds.  For an animal of such presence to be treated in such a hostile fashion is a crime and in my humble opinion, it is a crime against nature herself.  We must all stand firm and protect the Badgers that we know about, for, once a Badger sett has been destroyed, the Badger seldom returns and that part of our countryside that hosted the great Black and Whites is disfranchised forever. 
The two great diseases filling the news at the moment that does require everyone’s attention is Isis and Ebola.  The prescription for the Isis problem is going to require an international force with boots on the ground.  Air strikes alone cannot possibly dislodge them.  Again, we are months and months behind the curve.  So many lost and ruined lives, all actions have been totally inadequate to contain this rampant disease across the Middle East. 
On the Ebola side of things, the measure for screening at our airports and the Euro Star, St Pancreas station, London, taken by our government this week seems all rather unsettling.  To a layman like myself it seems an absolute non brainer that you must have all the screening done in West Africa before people travel, rather than let people travel from these destinations where Ebola seems most rife.  Travelling on airplanes, trains, cheek by jowle with all other passengers.  It seems to me that if you want an Ebola epidemic we are going about things in just the right way.  Basic Foot and Mouth precautions seem light years more advanced than the procedure put in place to contain something like Ebola.  Quarantine and isolation is the best start of prevention.  Fundamental measures that have been left wanting. 
Scientists worldwide are working around the clock to produce an ever better vaccine for this cursed Ebola, for this is how it will be combatted like all other major diseases.  The world’s best intelligence working together to create a retaliatory vaccine, something that should have been put in place for our own Bovine TB cattle programme because, without the vaccination of our countryside Badgers in oral form or otherwise, means this horrendous Badger cull will have to continue year on year because the denominator laid down by Defra is that killing Badgers is the only alternative to the ongoing Bovine TB problem in our cattle herds.  Vaccination is and always will be the driver that will eradicate Bovine TB in our cattle herds.

Please watch my short film of my Badgers tustling and wrestling, having the time of their lives under a Blood Moon, enjoying their woodland environment to the full.


Badgers playing in their woodland under a Blood Moon

No comments:

Post a Comment