Protecting the Badger?

Abstract

As we have already explored in Chap. 1, badgers have occupied an oddly significant role in British culture and politics since the late nineteenth century at least; and appear to have been involved in wildlife conflicts (conflicts between humans and animals and conflicts between humans about animals) for even longer. 1 This chapter will pick up the story of the Great British Badger Debate in the mid-1960s, when it was reignited by animal advocates drawing media, public and policy attention to the persecution, hunting and maiming of badgers due to their social role as 'vermin'. While campaigners made several attempts at obtaining new legal protections for the animals, it was not until after the discovery of tuberculous badgers that the Badgers Act was made law in 1973. This chapter will move the focus away from Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food's (MAFF) scientists and veterinarians to instead address the more diffuse epistemic community of badger protection. While these campaigners were less directly connected with policy , their deep knowledge of these awkward creatures and public influence made them invaluable partners for Ministry scientists and policymakers during the 1970s. Just as we have already done with animal health and disease ecology, to understand badger protection campaigners' responses to badger/ bTB, we must place them in their broader historical contexts-this time of mid-twentieth-century natural history, environmental and animal politics. This chapter will explain how a diverse coalition of animal welfare NGOs, animal rescue activists, naturalists, field biologists, members of both Houses of Parliament, the Women's Institute and the Daily Mirror was built in