Badger vaccination report

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Amy Caldwell
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1 Badger vaccination report Vaccination 2014 Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales Report

2 Badger Vaccination, Castle Woods Nature Reserve, Carmarthenshire Year One Report (2014) Report by Dr Lizzie Wilberforce, Conservation Manager / Introduction The Wildlife Trusts across the UK have been working on the issue of bovine TB and its links to badgers for many years, as different Governments have put forward proposals for culling badgers as a strategy for controlling bovine TB. We are very conscious of the hardship that bovine TB (btb) causes in the farming community and the need to find the right mechanisms to control the disease. However, we believe that a badger cull is not the answer. Lord Krebs, who designed a previous trial, concluded that that culling is not a viable policy option. We recognise the seriousness of the situation for farmers but the emphasis of all our efforts should be to find a long-term solution. We therefore support badger vaccination, alongside a comprehensive package of cattle measures: better biosecurity, stricter movement controls, improved TB testing and development of a cattle vaccine. As such we strongly support the current Welsh Government TB Eradication Programme. For this reason, the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales (WTSWW) decided to invest in a badger vaccination project at its Castle Woods nature reserve, Llandeilo. We felt it was important to be part of the solution, and to play a role in demonstrating that badger vaccination is financially and logistically viable on individual holdings. The site: Castle Woods nature reserve Castle Woods is an ancient, semi-natural woodland lying on the outskirts of Llandeilo in Carmarthenshire. It is a SSSI and National Nature Reserve, and it has been a WTSWW nature reserve since It is well known for its badger population and many local people watch badgers here. The adjacent parkland of Dinefwr, largely in National Trust (NT) ownership, also has a strong badger population. Both the park and tenanted farmland surrounding Castle Woods is grazed; some areas are sheep grazed but a large number of cattle are also kept on this land, both on the flood plain (by tenant farmers of the NT) and in the park itself, in the form of the NT s rare breed White Park Cattle. TB breakdowns have occurred in local herds. The Castle Woods nature reserve itself comprises 25 ha of steep hillside broadleaf woodland, providing ideal habitat for setts, some of which are extensive and well established. The surrounding land (not in WTSWW ownership) provides excellent foraging for badgers.

Map 1: The extent of Castle Woods nature reserve in relation to Llandeilo town The badger population of Dinefwr A complete survey for badger signs across WTSWW property was undertaken during

3 Map 1: The extent of Castle Woods nature reserve in relation to Llandeilo town The badger population of Dinefwr A complete survey for badger signs across WTSWW property was undertaken during In 2014, NT property was also surveyed by the WTSWW team, on the NT s behalf. The survey was conducted by WTSWW staff over five days with the support of a number of volunteers. The difficult terrain within Castle Woods made some areas slow to survey. A total of 695 badger signs were recorded using a GPS (in this context signs means sett entrances or latrines). These were then mapped in a GIS system to identify setts and target trapping effort. For data security reasons, the map is not presented in this report, but the data may be available on request. Funding We have been fortunate to benefit from financial support to undertake the badger vaccination work at Castle Woods. Fifty percent of the project costs are being met by the Welsh Government badger vaccination grant. The rest has been provided by WTSWW core funds, a badger vaccination appeal by WTSWW to its members, and funding from the players of the People s Postcode Lottery. Our approach A number of Wildlife Trusts in England have trained their own staff to undertake badger vaccination. Because of the large number of scattered sites managed by

Wildlife Trusts, the process of vaccinating badgers on all nature reserves is very labour intensive, because unless sites are in very close proximity, only one site could be vaccinated per trapping

However, training up and licensing staff in house is not a viable model for most landowners, who own and manage a single holding, because of the cost of accreditation for vaccinating a relatively

4 Wildlife Trusts, the process of vaccinating badgers on all nature reserves is very labour intensive, because unless sites are in very close proximity, only one site could be vaccinated per trapping session. This makes the use of contractors prohibitively costly, as labour is the greatest part of the vaccination costs, and the use of trained staff more efficient under this model. However, training up and licensing staff in house is not a viable model for most landowners, who own and manage a single holding, because of the cost of accreditation for vaccinating a relatively limited hectareage at a single location. Therefore, WTSWW decided to adopt the approach of a contractor-based vaccination model, with the intention of demonstrating that it is financially viable and worth delivering even at the scale of a single farm. This would allow WTSWW as the landowner to contribute as much to the work in-house as could be done without training and licensing, and the rest done through the appointment of an appropriate contractor. This is a model much more relevant to most landowners than the landscape-scale work currently being delivered by Welsh Government. It was therefore hoped that the results of our work would assist in encouraging other landowners to vaccinate their badgers. Vaccination in 2014 We were fortunate to work in partnership with Andrew Crace-Calvert of EcoCon Ltd. to deliver our badger vaccination 1. SSSI consent for the work was secured by WTSWW from Natural Resources Wales before work began. All other licences and permissions were secured by EcoCon. This year, the vaccination programme began on 09 June with a site visit to check current sett activity, followed by a period of pre-baiting and four nights of trapping and vaccinating. Vaccination occurred in the Castle block on the mornings of 23 and 24 June and in the South Lodge / Church block on the mornings of 25 and 26 June. Trapping was very successful, with a total of 34 unique individuals vaccinated over the four nights, including 29 1 EcoCon Limited, Leon Villas, Ash Rd, Lightpill, Stroud, Gloucs GL5 3PD / / info@ecocon.co.uk

5 cubs. A significant number of re-traps occurred on the second night of each session. For example, on the first night of the second trapping session, 20 badgers were caught (including five traps that each contained two animals, normally cubs). We caught 14 in the same traps on the second night, only two of which were new individuals. On this basis we have good grounds for believing we successfully vaccinated a large proportion of the resident badger population. Finances The costs of this year s programme are laid out in the table below. Cost item 2014 EcoCon Ltd. Mileage Van rental Animal grade peanuts Incidentals Overnight costs BCG vaccinations Labour and overheads 3, Subtotal 5, VAT 1, EcoCon Total 6, WTSWW Labour (vaccination) 1, WTSWW Total 1, Media coverage Significant media interest was shown in this year s vaccination work. Interviews were recorded with BBC Radio Wales, ITV Wales, and BBC Wales. A Wildlife Trust press release was also picked up in the local press. WTSWW recorded a video of the work itself which is available on YouTube. Cost-benefit analysis Based on our year one data, we undertook a very crude cost-benefit analysis of the potential impact of our work. The total capital cost for the project, if you take WTSWW staff labour out of the costings, was Although WTSWW staff time is a core part of project costs,

if using these results as a model for other landowners, it is cash outlay that would be the primary consideration. This makes the cost of vaccination this year 200 per badger.

6 if using these results as a model for other landowners, it is cash outlay that would be the primary consideration. This makes the cost of vaccination this year 200 per badger. However we would like to emphasise strongly that whilst many people are interested in this figure for vaccination programmes, it is not an appropriate measure of efficiency or effectiveness, because it depends entirely on the local landscape and nature of the badger population, which will vary widely between programmes. We also estimated the area of surrounding land that we believed our vaccination programme to have influenced (i.e. the grazed land that would now be utilised by vaccinated badgers, and within their territory). This was undertaken based on topographical features limiting badger movement (including Llandeilo town and the river Tywi) and our knowledge of adjacent (unvaccinated) badger setts from our survey of the NT land, and the likely interface between them. Map two shows the extent of our estimated area of influence from our vaccination programme. It totals 204 ha, of which around 179 ha are grazeable land, after the exclusion of wooded areas. If you use the average figure for dairy stocking density of 2 cows per hectare in lowland England and Wales 2, a total of 358 individual animals could have been protected by this vaccination programme. It will not be this many at Dinefwr, because of the mixed land use, but use of this average allows us to predict the impact of an equivalent programme sited on a privately owned cattle farm. This makes the cost of the programme 19 per head of cattle protected. Whilst this is still more expensive than routine vaccination programmes for other diseases that are deployed by most farm businesses, it is not significantly so, and we believe this shows that badger vaccination is within the reach of many cattle owners and worth the investment. Map 2: estimated area of influence of the Castle Woods badger vaccination 2 Chesterton, C (2009) Environmental Impacts of Land Management Natural England Research Report NERR030

7 Next steps We are committed to this programme for the next four years. Our badger appeal is still open, so if you would like to contribute to our badger vaccination you can find our more on our website. Acknowledgements We would like to thank all our funders and volunteers who made this work possible. We would also like to thank the National Trust for their support and for allowing us use of their storage facilities.

Badger Vaccination Progress Report

The Wildlife Trusts Badger Vaccination Progress Report 2011-13 Wildlife Trusts: Badger Vaccination Report 1 Protecting Wildlife for the Future Executive summary In 2011, Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust