Dec

20

2007
 
 

Dead badgers set foxes free



Removal of one key predator releases another, experiment shows

do badgers protect birds?Farmers really don’t love European badgers Meles meles enough. Decades of blaming the UK’s largest native predator for transmitting bovine TB led to the establishment of a controversial, “definitive” experiment: the Randomised Badger Culling Trial. While the UK government continues to ignore the study’s unequivocal findings (despite having designed and bankrolled it), scientists have been piggybacking it to make other discoveries. For example, a group led by the Central Science Laboratory’s Iain Trewby report in Biology Letters that in areas where badgers were eliminated red fox Vulpes vulpes numbers increased substantially. It’s a classic example of mesopredator release – foxes and badgers share diets and sometimes dens, but foxes are punier – although a rarity in being so clear-cut. The findings reinforce questions about the impact of predator removal on prey species: some conservation efforts have come tragically unstuck in this way. With robust experimental results, however, conservation managers can design policies driven by science rather than blind faith. It’s a pity politicians can’t do the same. Source: Trewby ID, Wilson GJ, Delahay RJ, Walker N, Young R, Davison J, Cheeseman C, Robertson PA, Gorman ML & McDonald RA (2007) Experimental evidence of competitive release in sympatric carnivores. Biology Letters DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2007.0516

Image © Suzann Julien

Filed Under Restoration, Monitoring, Economics and conservation, Socio-political issues | 

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