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BRITISH ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY PRESS RELEASE

12 February 2007

How badger culling creates conditions for spread of bovine TB

A stable social structure may help control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (TB) among badgers, ecologists have found. The findings – published online in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology – have important implications for the role of badger culling as part of the strategy to control bovine TB in the UK.

AAccording to the authors from the Central Science Laboratory and the Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegético in Spain: “The evidence suggests that movement of individuals between groups may be instrumental in driving disease dynamics at the population level, and adds further support to the contention that the social disruption of badger populations, for example by culling, is likely to promote disease spread.”

Data for the study came from an undisturbed high-density badger population in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, that has been intensively studied by ecologists for more than 15 years. The authors analysed almost 9,000 trapping records involving 1,859 different badgers between 1990 and 2004. Each time a badger was trapped it was sexed, weighed and samples of blood, sputum, urine and faeces were taken before it was released. They found that TB rates were lowest when there was the least movement of individual badgers between groups.

There have been few experimental studies of the incidence of infectious disease in socially-structured wildlife populations, and this study shows that such information is crucial to understanding how population structure affects the spread of disease.

The results also have major implications for future policy to control bovine TB in the UK. According to the authors: “Past badger culling policies have been accompanied by an inexorable rise in the incidence of TB in cattle. Indeed, it has become apparent that the various strategies may actually have been a contributory factor to the increase in disease through perturbation. The results presented in this paper lend weight to this argument.”

“The development of successful strategies for the control of TB in badgers and transmission to cattle will require serious consideration of the likely impact of any interventions on badger social organization,” the authors say.

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Notes for editors

1. J Vicente et al (2007). Social organization and movement influence the incidence of bovine tuberculosis in an undisturbed high-density badger Meles meles population. Journal of Animal Ecology, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2006.01199.x is published online early and will appear in the March issue of the journal.

2. Further information and copies of the paper are available from Becky Allen, British Ecological Society Press Officer, tel: +44 (0)1223 570016, mob: + 44 (0)7949 804317, email: beckyallen@ntlworld.com.

3. 3. In two papers published by the Journal of Applied Ecology in 2005, the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB reported that localised reactive culling failed to control TB incidence in cattle, and that by disrupting badgers' territorial systems, culling could increase contacts between badgers and cattle (see R Woodroffe et al, www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/jpe/42/5 www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/jpe/42/5 and R Woodroffe et al, www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/jpe/43/1).

4. The Journal of Animal Ecology is published by Blackwell Publishing for the British Ecological Society. Contents lists are available at www.blackwellpublishing.com/loi/jae.

5. The British Ecological Society is a learned society, a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. Established in 1913 by academics to promote and foster the study of ecology in its widest sense, the Society has 4,000 members in the UK and abroad. Further information is available at www.britishecologicalsociety.org.

Copyright 2007 British Ecological Society. All Rights Reserved