Good news for our badgers!

Calderdale Badger Protection Group are fundraising to start our first badger vaccination scheme!

Vaccinating wildlife populations is nothing new. We vaccinate our cats and dogs at home (and our children too of course) and in the same way we can protect our wildlife. In Belgium, Canada, France and the United States successful vaccination projects were proven to minimise rabies amongst wildlife and household pets alike, significantly lowering transmission and outbreak rates. Extensive research shows that the likelihood of badgers transmitting bTB to cattle is extremely low and this is even more true in a low risk area like Calderdale. Even though we are a low risk area for bTB, we are going to vaccinate our badgers so that we can make sure that they stay healthy into the future by being protected against Mycobacterium bovis, and in this way we shall be supporting our farmers as best we can too.

Research shows that vaccinating badgers benefits them in lots of ways. Here are only some of them!

- Vaccinating more than 1/3 of adults in a badger social group reduces new infections in unvaccinated badger cubs, which is already very low risk in Calderdale, by 79%. This is called ‘herd immunity’.

- It also reduces the rate of new infections in adult badgers by 76%. In our badger population, where the risk of infection is already very low indeed, this is significant.

- It reduces the severity and progression of the disease.

- It also targets susceptible badgers who are, of course, exactly the ones who need the protection of vaccination the most.

- It doesn’t disrupt badger populations at all, so that in the very unlikely event that a badger here were infective, it would not roam into the territories of other healthy groups and possibly infect them, which research shows commonly happens in cull areas thus making the situation worse.

- It is safe – there is no evidence of negative effects on badger health or welfare. It is neither cruel nor lethal and it doesn’t have a negative impact on ecological balance or bio-diversity.

- It only costs £82 now to vaccinate one badger. Of course, herd immunity means that vaccinating one badger also protects others who haven’t been vaccinated, so actually by vaccinating more than one third of adults in a social group means that a very high number of their cubs are protected for free! Down the generations this herd immunity becomes even higher.

The more money we can raise, the more badgers we can protect, thank you for your support!

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