I'm paid to watch you

Badgerland Comment: This very well-written article from The Times provides an excellent explanation of the extra-ordinary lengths that MAFF are having to go to, to make sure the Krebs badger killing experiment takes place. Who said we don't live in a "police-state"?

MONDAY JANUARY 22 2001
Cover Story by Adrian Sherratt

I had gone to north Wiltshire to find out what was happening to badgers there. As journalistic assignments go, it didn’t seem that radical. The area is one of ten in the country where badgers are being trapped and killed as part of government research into TB in cows. The cull has been controversial - criticised by farmers, MPs and activists - and information is hard to come by. The Government does not give out “operational details”, nor do the police. But the rumour was that the killing was about to start.

I rang Sue Boyes-Korkis and her husband Malcolm Clark, who live in the tiny village of Horton just outside Devizes. They run a wildlife consultancy and occasional badger hospital. They have been monitoring the cull in order to be on hand to rescue any orphaned cubs. They said the 12-day trapping period was about to start and agreed to take me round to see what the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) is up to.

So, I wondered, would it be balaclavas at dawn? “I don’t think people still do that,” said Sue, rather gently.

Malcolm said to bring wellingtons and a packed lunch. Also, he said, be prepared to be questioned by police. They were in plain clothes and stopping people in the cull areas. Sometimes people were videoed from a police helicopter. I laughed and said it sounded unbelievable. In the next 24 hours my attitude would change completely.

It is a cold morning and the swans in Devizes are not paddling round their pond but sitting on its icy surface. We, on the other hand, are turning into icicles on nearby Roundway Hill. We have gone there for the spectacular view - you can see all the way to the Salisbury Plain — and because MAFF had been setting traps in this area the day before.

The car park is deserted. We walk on the path round the top of the hill. To our left is a very steep decline. Sue points to a path of flattened grass. “There’s a badger run. There’s a sett down there. Do you want to see it?” I look down and ask if we are abseiling but Sue is already skidding down the hill.

The only word to describe Sue when it comes to badgers is passionate. She is thrilled to find grass and “bedding” littering the entrance of one hole, saying it means a pregnant sow is underneath our feet. She hates the cull, pointing out that there is no proof that badgers pass on bovine TB to cows. This is true, but the five to seven-year cull is aimed at examining exactly this question. Sue and Malcolm believe the cull is unworkable and cruel. Last year they helped to rescue four cubs whose mothers had been killed.

Badgers are a protected species but the Government has given itself permission to break the law to investigate the TB link. The MAFF cull is a grand, if rather basic, experiment involving 202 dedicated staff at a cost of £34 million over seven years. Each of the 300- square-kilometre areas is called a “triplet” and is divided into three parts. One is for survey only, the second for “reactive” culling of badgers near TB-infected cattle, the third for “proactive” culling of all badgers. All dead badgers are tested for bovine TB (usually about 20 per cent have it) and MAFF will be monitoring how all of this affects TB in local cattle. No results will be given until 2004.

North Wiltshire is called Triplet E and Roundway Hill is in the “proactive” area. Last year 602 badgers died in Triplet E. The cull takes place twice a year and is suspended during the main cub season, from February until April. Each cull takes about a month. First, MAFF “operatives” put down wire cage traps and sprinkle peanuts round a sett. After two weeks, the traps are baited. Peanuts are placed beneath a stone and a green piece of twine runs from the stone to the trap door. When the stone is moved the trap is sprung. The next day the badger will be shot with a pistol.

Back on our steep Wiltshire slope, Sue and Malcolm get out their binoculars and scan the fields.

“Bingo!” shouts Sue.

She points to a green Land Rover two fields away. It is a MAFF vehicle and, as we watch, three men walk towards it. One is carrying a big bag of peanuts, the others have shovels. Sue and Malcolm think they have been baiting traps and want to take me to two nearby setts to check it out.

The MAFF men are looking at us through their own binoculars. We head down the hill and, to our left, two other men appear in the field below. Sue and Malcolm wonder if they are from MAFF or the police. I say they might just be walkers. No reason to be paranoid, after all. The men stop for a smoke and, just as we walk by, one of them speaks.

“You’ll know the public rights of way then, will you?” he asks.

We say we do. He says we are not on a footpath. He says that he doesn’t need to be on a footpath because he works here. Then he tells us that the nearest footpath is three fields over.

We walk away. Our map clearly shows a footpath at the bottom of the very field we are in. There is a sett along this path, so we turn right and start walking along it. Ahead of us, a second green Land Rover appears. It drives into the field, picking up the two “walkers”, one of whom is talking on a mobile phone.

They drive slowly towards us, across the field. We keep walking. The Land Rover is now coming straight up the footpath. It stops in front of us. No one gets out or speaks to us. Sue and Malcolm know it is a MAFF vehicle by the number plate. We walk round it and head up the hill. The Land Rover turns and follows us at a distance.

The people in the first MAFF vehicle are still looking at us through their binoculars. So now six men are watching us. I say that the last time this happened to me, I was doing a story in Kurdistan in south-east Turkey in a military zone. But this is not Kurdistan, it is Wiltshire. No one is at war here. Or at least I hadn’t thought so until now.

We walk along a rutted dirt road. There is a large sett to our right and, in the trees, we can see four or five traps that have been trashed. Malcolm says this is a common sight. At a protest in Devizes the previous weekend, several people had come up and said they planned to wreck any traps they saw.

Malcolm and Sue say they would never trash a trap. So who is doing it? The balaclava gang? They dismiss this. “It’s just people power,” says Malcolm. “People out walking their dogs, that sort of thing.”

We walk back up the road. The second Land Rover has stopped at the top. The men are watching us through binoculars. It takes what seems an age to walk up this road. At the top we walk past the vehicle and a man gets out and watches us. Malcolm asks what he is doing.

“I’m watching you,” he says.

Malcolm asks if he hasn’t anything better to do.

“I’m paid to watch you,” says the man.

Malcolm asks who is paying him.

“The Government,” he says. “Your taxes.” The man smiles. We turn and walk on. After a few minutes, the Land Rover drives away. The back of it is full of badger traps.

It takes 20 minutes to return to the car park. When we get there it looks as if a party is going on. There are five vehicles in total. One is ours, another belongs to Adrian Sherratt, the Times photographer. There is also a green MAFF Land Rover and two Vauxhall Fronteras, one red, one dark blue. Two policemen who had questioned Sue and Malcolm the day before are in the dark car. They are all in street clothes.

One policeman videos us as we walk towards our car. His partner jumps out of the car. They do not identify themselves. Later I would learn they had just been questioning and videoing our photographer as he sat in his car eating a sandwich. They say they are on an operation to stop beauty spot thefts. Their tone is not helpful or informative, however. It seems bumptious and almost jocular.

After a few minutes of this, I identify myself as a journalist and ask if this is really about beauty spot thefts. They say yes. Why were we videoed? Is it normal to video members of the public walking to their cars? Yes, I was told, it is.

So, I ask, none of this has anything to do with badgers? “Not at the moment,” says the one who videoed us. They drive off. We ask a man in the red Frontera for the names of the two “beauty spot” policeman. He gives us the names. I ask if he is a policeman and he says no.

So how did he know the names? “Police are friendly people. We’ve been chatting,” says the man, who insists he is merely up there to drink a cup of coffee. As we walk away, he calls to Malcolm: “I’ll see you again later.”

We get into the car. The men in the Frontera and the MAFF vehicle watch us drive away.

The day continues in this sinister, if cartoonish, mode. At another sett we are followed by a MAFF vehicle that creeps along beside us. Later, when the photographer is packing up his gear, the “beauty spot” policemen arrive again to question him. At the same time MAFF is contacting The Times office in London with fears over the photographs.

MAFF should worry less about people like us, though, and more about the viability of this ambitious experiment. Is it really possible to kill every badger in these areas? In my one day in the field I saw six setts (and not one herd of cows) but only three had traps by them. In addition, of the 13 traps we did see, only two were baited and ready to go; the rest had been trashed or disabled in some way. The public does not like this cull. Malcolm’s mobile “badger hotline” rang throughout the day with calls of support and information. Campaigners say MAFF should realise these difficulties and push harder to find a bovine TB vaccine (£1.4 million a year is spent on this).

But the day left me feeling uneasy for another reason. We had done nothing wrong and yet the police and MAFF had seemed secretive, evasive and, in some ways, intimidating. Devizes police headquarters will not comment on the cull operation, except to say it was conducted to “maintain public order”. The police, not MAFF, pay for it. The helicopter is also sometimes used to stop “disorder”. A spokesman says video cameras are not randomly used to record members of the public and, if they are, it is entirely in accordance with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the Human Rights Act.

This is questionable. The day after my visit, Sue and Malcolm were videoed as they stood in Safeway’s car park in Devizes. The men videoing were the same as from the previous day. The next day Sue was followed on foot round Devizes by the men in the red Frontera. She escaped only by going through the back of a dry-cleaning shop. “They have never asked me my name. They are following me. It is intimidating,” she says.

Clearly badgers are not the only ones being hunted in the beautiful hills of north Wiltshire.

For more information, please click the following link:

• http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,7-71418-realmedia,00.html