SongBird Survival to help fund badger study

SongBird Survival has offered to help fund a research project designed to look at the effect of a badger cull on songbird numbers.

The conservation charity has met with DEFRA’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Ian Boyd, to discuss the project.

SongBird Survival’s Nick Forde said: “It [the project] would mean that we can assess whether badger numbers have a serious impact on our ever-dwindling farmland bird population.”

The research would not start until next year at the earliest, but SongBird Survival hopes to prepare a plan of how to conduct it.

“We have spoken to the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust [GWCT] about methodology, and the potential option of using brood counts to see whether a reduced number of badgers means fewer nests are predated,” said Mr Forde. “At the very least, we believe that the stomach content analysis of culled badgers should be undertaken.”

The rest of this article appears in the 15th May issue of Shooting Times.

What is YOUR opinion?

Join other ST readers in our forums to discuss your views.

Like this article? Mark this page on a social bookmarking website…