Evidence, not a false narrative, must shape rural conservation

Badger Trust responds to claims linking badgers to biodiversity decline and bovine TB, highlighting the scientific evidence and calling for conservation policy based on facts, not false narratives.

In the recent Telegraph article, “The farmer, her peerage and claims of a countryside betrayed” (20 May 2026), former NFU president Minette Batters discussed badgers in the context of biodiversity decline and bovine tuberculosis, stating quite firmly that badgers “spread bovine tuberculosis” and “destroy the nests of endangered birds such as curlew and lapwing”.

As our Chair, Rosie Wood, makes clear, “Using the standard of evidence in the article, it would be just as accurate to point out that sheep, deer, and dog walkers spread bTB around the countryside” and “destroy the nests of endangered birds such as curlew and lapwing”.

Indeed, hedgehogs, songbirds, wood mice, weasels, stoats, pine martens, otters, foxes, raptors, herons, corvids, and a host of other native British animals ‘destroy’ the nests of endangered birds such as curlew and lapwing. 

Whilst the article raises important questions about the pressures facing British farming, food security and the future of the rural economy, all of which deserve serious public attention, it also shows an inaccurate and overly simplistic interpretation of the scientific evidence surrounding badgers. 

Rosie Wood, Chair of Badger Trust, said: "The article suggests that conservation debates around badgers are constrained by the fact that 'the badger is protected' and raises the question of whether the countryside is 'too timid' to have 'grown-up conversations around conservation.' It’s called ‘predation’ - a secondary pressure - and as such predation by native species is never, and I do mean NEVER, a driver of extinction."

“The methodology of some of the studies used to conclude that predation is the issue is itself vaguely comical - if it wasn’t taken so absurdly seriously. By identifying nests and ensuring that generous farmers protect those nests, safeguarding them from all of the nationally documented reasons for species decline (machinery, vehicles, livestock and crucially silage harvested between early April and late July), researchers successfully removed all of the known primary pressures, leaving only secondary pressures. It’s a bit like deciding that all road traffic collisions are caused by low-speed reversing manoeuvres because the research was conducted on supermarket carparks rather than on a representative sample of UK roads studied at scale”. 

At Badger Trust, we agree that honest and informed conversations about conservation are essential. But those discussions must be grounded in evidence and context, not in narratives that unfairly scapegoat a single protected native species for far wider environmental problems.

While badgers are opportunistic omnivores and may occasionally predate eggs or chicks (as many other species can do), there is no credible scientific evidence that badgers are the principal cause of nationwide declines in species such as curlew and lapwing.

For example, of 1062 monitored wader nests, badgers were estimated to have predated 12.3% of nests, compared with 13.9% by other species such as foxes, ungulates, and corvids (Barton et al., 2025). More specifically, badgers were found to have predated 6% of lapwing nests on a single farm over a 6-year period and were more likely to predate nests only when weather conditions affected the availability of earthworms, their main food source (Tolhurst et al., 2025).

Conservation organisations, including the RSPB, the British Trust for Ornithology, and Natural England, consistently identify habitat loss, wetland drainage, agricultural intensification, changes in land management, pesticide use, and wider ecosystem degradation as the dominant causes of the collapse of many ground-nesting bird populations across the UK (RSPB, 2026). The role of predation should also be viewed in the context of habitat change, as agricultural land can fragment habitats and increase predation pressure (Batary & Baldi, 2004; Reino et al., 2010).

The article itself highlights many of the broader pressures facing the countryside, including changing farming economics, land-use pressures and environmental instability. These are the systemic issues driving biodiversity decline, not the existence of a single protected native species. Indeed, the call to cull badger populations will not solve the issue, as analyses show that areas that culled badgers had little effect on bird populations (Ward et al., 2022).

The article also repeats the assertion that badgers “spread bovine tuberculosis” without reflecting the full scientific context. Bovine TB is a complex cattle disease influenced predominantly by cattle movement, cattle-to-cattle transmission, testing limitations and on and off-farm biosecurity. Independent scientific reviews have repeatedly concluded that badger culling cannot eradicate bovine TB in cattle (e.g. Langford, Jones & McGill, 2022; Torgerson et al., 2024). Results from culling cannot be separated from these other important measures taking place at the same time. The Government has called the cull ‘ineffective’, and it also has serious animal welfare concerns. 

Badgers have suffered enormously as a result of myths and false narratives surrounding their role in the spread of bovine TB, with more than 250,000 badgers killed in England over the past decade through the badger cull, with no meaningful change in bovine TB in cattle during this time.

Nigel Palmer, CEO of Badger Trust, said:

“We care about the future of the British countryside, but debate about conservation must be grounded in evidence, not narratives that scapegoat badgers for far broader environmental failures. The biodiversity crisis has been driven overwhelmingly by habitat destruction, agricultural intensification and decades of ecosystem degradation. Suggesting that badgers are chiefly responsible for declining bird populations misrepresents the scientific evidence and distracts from the meaningful action needed to restore nature.”

Importantly, the article omits the fact that badgers are a protected species because of unprecedented persecution and resulting population decline, persecution that, sadly, still continues today. Their legal protection reflects this serious issue of persecution, and there is strong public support for safeguarding native wildlife, not an unwillingness to have “grown-up conversations around conservation”. 

Badgers belong here; they have inhabited the UK for hundreds of thousands of years, and that protection should rightly remain in place.

Nigel Palmer, CEO of Badger Trust, continued:

We are increasingly seeing misleading claims about badgers amplified online without any reference, fact-checking or scientific context. 

Public figures and media outlets have a responsibility to ensure claims about wildlife are evidence-based, particularly when they influence public attitudes and conservation policy.”

It seems far too easy to make unsupported claims about badgers. We must remember they are a native species and are vital to healthy ecosystems and habitats. It is time to end the Badger Blame Game  

Conservation policy must be grounded in robust ecological evidence, not increasingly repeated false narratives that scapegoat a single native species for far wider systemic environmental problems. 

Debate about conservation is both important and necessary, but effective biodiversity recovery depends on habitat restoration, sustainable land management, improved water systems and evidence-led farming policy, and Badgers have a vital  role to play in the future of the British countryside

References

Barton, M.G., Conway, G.J., Henderson, I.G., Baddams, J., Balchin, C.S., Brides, K., Butcher, N., Cameron, T.C., Davis, T., Eyre, J., Foster, R., Gornall, D., Kallamballi, N.K., Laurie, P., Nixon, A., Noyes, P., Parish, D.M.B., Samson, L., Smart, J., Wilde, N., Wright, M.A. and Dolman, P.M. (2026), Meta-analysis of predator identity in nest-camera studies in the British Islands. Ibis, 168: 42-62. doi.org/10.1111/ibi.13436

Batary, P. and Baldi, A. (2004), Evidence of an Edge Effect on Avian Nest Success. Conservation Biology, 18: 389-400. doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2004.00184.x

Langton, T. E., Jones, M. W., & McGill, I. (2022). Analysis of the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the high‐risk area of England, 2009–2020. Veterinary Record, 190(6), e1384. doi.org/10.1002/vetr.1384

Reino, L., Porto, M., Morgado, R., Carvalho, F., Mira, A., & Beja, P. (2010). Does afforestation increase bird nest predation risk in surrounding farmland?. Forest Ecology and Management, 260(8), 1359-1366. doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2010.07.032

RSPB. (2026, April). Give birds space: Ground-nesting birds need your help. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. www.rspb.org.uk/england/england-news/give-birds-space-this-spring-and-summer

Tolhurst, B. A., Wright, M. A., Parish, D. M., Nicolai, M. K., Aebischer, N. J., & de Raad, A. L. (2025). Temperature drives inter‐annual variation in badger Meles meles predation of lapwing Vanellus vanellus on Scottish hill‐edge farmland. Journal of Avian Biology, 2025(4), e03436. doi.org/10.1002/jav.03436

Torgerson, P. R., Hartnack, S., Rasmussen, P., Lewis, F., & Langton, T. E. (2024). Absence of effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 16326. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-67160-0

Ward, C.V., Heydon, M., Lakin, I., Sullivan, A.J. and Siriwardena, G.M. (2022), Breeding bird population trends during 2013–2019 inside and outside of European badger control areas in England. Journal of Zoology, 318: 166-180. doi.org/10.1111/jzo.13010