{"id":2594,"date":"2012-10-24T09:19:57","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T08:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=2594"},"modified":"2012-10-24T09:19:57","modified_gmt":"2012-10-24T08:19:57","slug":"theres-been-an-unexpected-boom-in-the-badger-population-it-seems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/10\/24\/theres-been-an-unexpected-boom-in-the-badger-population-it-seems\/","title":{"rendered":"There's been an unexpected boom in the badger population, it seems ..."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This was the reason that the today's <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b01nkw0d\">Today<\/a> programme put forward for the government's decision to put off its useless slaughter of badgers till the new year. \u00a0But this idea is ridiculous. \u00a0There has been no boom; no massive increase in population (by ~80% if the much discredited <a href=\"http:\/\/www.defra.gov.uk\">Defra<\/a> is to be believed), unless these are EU migrant badgers looking for better setts in Somerset and Gloucestershire.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, there have been two separate population estimates; one back in the summer, saying that 4500 badgers needed to be shot; and one now, saying it's 7900. \u00a0So, estimated costs have gone up, and time has run out. \u00a0What a shambles. \u00a0Of course, had the cull gone ahead in the summer on the 4500 number, not enough would have been shot for even Defra to pretend its policy has been effective, AND all those unaccounted for (and un-shot) badgers would have spread TB farther into cattle herds. \u00a0Oddly, this was not something its hapless minister mentioned as he shouted at the camera on Chanel 4 news last night. \u00a0Desperate stuff. \u00a0Who'd believe anything they say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was the reason that the today's Today programme put forward for the government's decision to put off its useless slaughter of badgers till the new year. \u00a0But this idea is ridiculous. \u00a0There has been no boom; no massive increase...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}