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Albinism an advantage!

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Category: General
Forum Name: Associated Fauna and Flora
Forum Description: A forum for plants, invertebrates and other animals associated with herpetofauna
URL: http://www.herpetofauna.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4039
Printed Date: 29 Mar 2024 at 2:07am
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Topic: Albinism an advantage!
Posted By: Liz Heard
Subject: Albinism an advantage!
Date Posted: 29 Jan 2012 at 2:58pm
hi,



Replies:
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 29 Jan 2012 at 10:28pm
Thanks for this psst Ben.
 
The issue of badger culling is a sensitive one.
 
i believe that the trial is only the temporary one to see it works.  
 
it is really important that the traps and methods used are humane of course, but at the same time it is important that other wildlife is not affected too.
 
Personally, I think it is a waste of time to cull the badgers because if you remove animals from a population then others will move in from adjacent areas. It would take a lot of effort to eradicate the whole population. This is the same situation when you culling mink populations and i believe it can take 5 years to have 100% success. What I'm saying is if they are going to start a culling programme, it needs to be consistent and not just a temporary thing.
 
The issue you have raised on animal rights activiists is an interesting one. If they are trespassing onto somebody elses land, then it's their own responsibility. If they are determined to find the exact location of a site, then they probably will. This is why it's so important not to advertise on the internet.
 
Animals rights groups are in a different league though. They can't see the wood for the trees if you know what i mean. Take the release of mink for example. Did they not think about the impacts the mink would have on our native wildlife. No.  So they probably won't think first before entering private land if they find the exact locations.
 
The badger debate is an important issue - that is so true.
 
 
 


Posted By: AGILIS
Date Posted: 30 Jan 2012 at 7:28am
Think the question is did the cattle give badgers TB or did the badgers give it to the cattle???cant see any cull is needed in arable farming areas. keith

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   LOCAL ICYNICAL CELTIC ECO WARRIOR AND FAILED DRUID


Posted By: Richard2
Date Posted: 30 Jan 2012 at 11:25am
Why do we think we are morally entitled to exterminate large numbers of wild animals because they are inconvenient to our commercial interests?


Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 30 Jan 2012 at 9:19pm
Originally posted by AGILIS AGILIS wrote:

Think the question is did the cattle give badgers TB or did the badgers give it to the cattle???cant see any cull is needed in arable farming areas. keith
 
Smile LOL
 
I don't think my colleague understood the question!
 
It is a million dollar question. .....Would go with the answer that the cattle gave each other TB.
 
 
 
 


Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 30 Jan 2012 at 9:20pm
Originally posted by Richard2 Richard2 wrote:

Why do we think we are morally entitled to exterminate large numbers of wild animals because they are inconvenient to our commercial interests?
 
And still tryng to figure out the answer to that one too.....
 
Nice pic though.
 
 


Posted By: Liz Heard
Date Posted: 03 Feb 2012 at 7:58pm
thanks


Posted By: Richard2
Date Posted: 03 Feb 2012 at 8:38pm
Ben,
 
Thanks. I seem to have been very argumentative on this forum over the last two weeks.
 
The bovine-TB-and-badgers topic isn't one I know very much about, but the idea of a mass cull of badgers seems repulsive; it seems a throwback to the mid-twentieth-century industrial mindset that came up with myxamotosis and battery hens. Human TB and bovine TB are very different variants, aren't they? A quick google search suggests that the risk of transmission to humans is so low as to be negligible (though a few cases have been known). Certainly, the TB that was such a terror in human populations before modern antibiotics was a quite different animal.
 
What's wrong with vaccination - of cattle and badgers?


Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 03 Feb 2012 at 9:55pm
Personally I'm with you Richard, what does give us the right to exterminate any animal on commercial grounds.

Particularly as in this case there is little evidence that culling will be in the least be effective and appears to have been a political move to appease farmers. Nothing against farmers, I have several I regard as friends, by in large they agree with my argument on this subject too.

In fact if it is OK to do so, I might as well hang up my walking boots for good, perhaps we should just let the developers bulldoze all our wildlife into the ground for housing, supermarkets etc. Then we can all sit indoors stuffing our faces on the processed food from a sterilised countryside. 

Hmmm, I just looked out of my window, we are already there aren't we. Cry


Posted By: Liz Heard
Date Posted: 24 Feb 2012 at 8:05pm
Originally posted by GemmaJF GemmaJF wrote:


Nothing against farmers, I have several I regard as friends, by in large they agree with my argument on this subject too.



thanks for your thoughts Gemma/Richard etc.



happy 2012 herping all

ben


Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 24 Feb 2012 at 8:34pm
Quite honestly if consultancy work was threatened Ben I would probably agree with its demise. I only went into because so many consultants are so crap at it I thought someone who could tell a GCN from a Smooth Newt ought to be doing it. It is in fact threatened but that is another story. I was very much on the conservation side from the start and currently all my projects for 2012 are entirely voluntary.

For sure the farmers I know are local. However my local farmer, Bob, is a livestock farmer not arable and his brother is also a livestock farmer based in the West Country. (Most of the hay grown at the local farm is transported down there in the summer). All I can say is Bob supported the view that culling was an appeasement and not proven to work. In fact the conversation was born from comments that his brother had made regarding the threat rather than any sentiment for Badgers. I'm quite happy to see the evidence to the contrary, if it exists. I'm not really someone who has fixed views on much in life and will accept the culling option if it is proven to actually work.

I rather think though with many things these days disinterested people get paid to write bullsh*t and the rest of us make the best of what they come up with that we can. I doubt the great Badger debate is immune to that. Wink


Posted By: Suzy
Date Posted: 24 Feb 2012 at 9:17pm
I guess I'm in the thick of it here in East Devon. I also have badgers that I feed in my garden (naughty me!). Loads of people feed them and the setts are within the town in large gardens. How will they get rid of these critters? Will there be a kind of town invasion as badgers invite their country cousins to hole up with them come the extermination? Will we be tripping up over them?
The TB thing interests me as many moons ago - well 1972/73 actually - I worked at MAFF on the brucellosis eradication scheme. In a small room were dusty old files of a card index for TB eradication which I was told had been completed as it was successful. Had it really, or had the money run out? I've looked on the Internet and found this article:-
http://archive.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/tb-control-measures/100915-tb-control-measures-annexa.pdf
I think here in Devon they will struggle to remove all badgers as there are places that are hard to reach - seaside undercliffs, under garden sheds and in gardens generally. It will surely be another government financial fiasco that will prove futile in the end.



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Suz


Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 24 Feb 2012 at 9:39pm

I would have to agree with Gemma on the farmer side of things.

Here at S/E we work with a number of local landowenrs/farmers, some who are livestock farmers. Those with cattle tend to be of the opinion that having badgers on their farm is bad news, so I think they would accept a culling of badgers if it was proven to work.

As for consultancy side of things, I would agree it is being threatened for sure, and some projects that we are involved in are also voluntary. This year is gong to be challenging, if we are in a recession but like you said that is another story altogether.

Re the badgers, I don't have a particular strong opinion about the culling, but if it is going to wipe out TB, then it needs to work. And it needs to be as "wildlife friendly" as possible. I say "wildlife friendly" in that the project needs to make sure that  other non-target species are not affected by the culling too.

Not much more I can say on the subject at this point.

And would agree with Ben too.
An open forum is a place for having an opinion and an argument about things. If you don't express your opinions, then you won't be heard. Besides having a debate about something, may bring fresh ideas or even a side of the story that you hadn't even thought of yet. Debates are great and to be honest, so is this forum.

There are lots of things that I would love to debate about on this forum.

bye for now.





Posted By: Richard2
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 11:53am
Ben,
 
Thanks for this generous and amiable response. There is no danger of falling out, as far as I'm concerned. Discussion, debate and courteous disagreement are what the forum is for.
 
I must admit again that I have no specialist knowledge of this subject at all. What I do have, and I think many do, is a sense of moral outrage at the idea of a mass cull - at the idea that we, human beings, one species, should think ourselves entitled to do this as a routine industrial policy. The moral implication of such a policy is that might is right, and the weaker can forfeit even the right to live, if their living is inconvenient to the strong. This was the routine assumption in agricultural management throughout most of the first phase of industrialisation - the first period in which the deliberate mass culling of other species became a practical possibility. Notions of animal rights, closely associated with environmentalism, developed in reaction against these assumptions, in the hope of modifyiong them - and, as far as public opinion is concerned, I think they have been modified very substantially in my lifetime.
 
The assumption that the weaker have no right to live is not only frightening in principle; it's frightening to us because historically it hasn't been restricted to other species - it has been applied frequently to people whom the mighty have designated as lesser human beings. This may seem a sensationalist or tasteless comparison, but the principle is the same.
 
But, of course, there are limit cases. When the mass existence of other species really threatens our own, as with the plague bacillus or bird flu, then the eradication of that threat becomes a matter of mortal self-defence. I think the moral question about the idea of a mass cull of badgers is whether we can honestly say that they pose a threat of this kind. I can't see that they do.
 
Do they threaten our basic food supply? No - there is no shortage of bovine products, and even if there were, other foods are plentifully available.
 
Do they threaten us with a mortal disease? That's the point of contention. It may be theoretically possible, as you suggest, that bovine TB could mutate into a much more dangerous form, but I haven't heard any scientific opinion express this view in the debate about culling. It's not why the government say they are doing it. We already have human TB, and have successfully reduced and contained it using antibiotics and innoculation. In any case, no one is suggesting, as far as I'm aware, that culling will eliminate bovine TB. The only claim is that it will reduce it, and probably only temporarily, unless cull after cull is envisaged.
 
As I understand it, the extent to which badgers are responsible for the spread is scientifically contested. Modern farming methods and the stress they place on cattle have also been implicated. The increased transportation of live animals has been implicated too. It might be inconvenient and financially costly to change these policies, but what is the force of that inconvenience against the moral principles involved?
 
And why not vaccinate cattle and badgers? I asked that question before. Again, I suspect the basic answer is that it would be too inconvenient and costly, compared with culling. But I bet they get to it in the end, because the spectacle of culling will prove too horrifying to public opinion, and will produce a backlash of the kind that scares politicians. Wait for the pictures to hit the press.
 
Richard


Posted By: Richard2
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 12:25pm

Ben,

My apologies - looking back, I see that you did explain several posts ago that the vaccination of cattle is forbidden by EU legislation. Any prospect of that changing? The same restriction was responsible for the foot-and-mouth mass slaughter, I believe.
 
Richard


Posted By: Liz Heard
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 3:48pm


cheers


Posted By: Richard2
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 4:23pm
So, if culling reduces incidence by only 23%, and probably only temporarily, then the argument about wiping out the disease in case it mutates into a form dangerous to humans isn't really there, is it? We're only talking about local reductions of less than a quarter.
 
Wildlife enthusiasts are already campaigning against these culls, and the politicians are clearly nervous about it. This could flare up as a political issue the way that calf-exports did. That would be bad - the politicians would run for cover, and the farmers who supported the cull would be left feeling bitterly isolated and misunderstood once again. I don't mean to downplay the threat to livelihood that some farmers face. In their position I would probably feel strong emotional support for the idea of a cull. Perhaps the violence of it is, subliminally, another attraction, a symbolic outlet for understandable anger. Or am I being unfair in saying that?
 
If badgers were trapped and vaccinated on a large scale, how long would that take to make a difference? You explained earlier that cattle vaccination, though effective, is forbidden because there is no test that distinguishes vaccinated from infected animals. I just don't know enough to understand the implications of this. Do some countries vaccinate? I believe Argentina vaccinates for foot-and-mouth without harm to its exports.
 
Richard 


Posted By: Richard2
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 4:31pm
Underlying this debate is a whole set of questions about how we value our wildlife and what countryside priorities should be, as well as questions about our ethical obligations to non-human creatures. Badgers are just one case. They are an animal a lot of people regard with affection, partly because of literary traditions. Herp enthusiasts wish the same affection existed more widely for snakes, lizards, frogs, newts and toads, don't they? Reconnecting with our native ecosystems is about caring about these creatures.


Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 5:50pm
I think underlying the debate is the simple fact that culling is not proven, cannot be proven and won't be proven to be effective.

I note Ben while addressing the core points as best he could avoided the issue. 

LOL


Posted By: Liz Heard
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 6:17pm
hello again Richard.


regards, Ben




Posted By: Liz Heard
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 6:57pm
[QUOT


Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 9:45pm

So why didn't they go for the vaccination option?

I think they reckoned it was too expensive to run such a programme, and culling just seemed the easier option.

Whichever method they use, it needs to work.


Posted By: Madfossa
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 11:23pm
Evening all.

I am quite new to this forum but felt i had join in with this emotive but scientific debate.

Firstly the idea of a cull is akin to the old saying :Do you build a decent fence at the top of a cliff or a hospital at the bottom. Surely prevention is better than cure in the long run, i'm sure you would agree with that Ben.

Farm animal husbandry, transportation of cattle have to be looked at, as stress is a known contributor to bTb. Farmers must also look to themselves as was recently discovered,when Welsh? farmers  were falsifying records in order to move cattle and these are just the ones that have been caught.
I also read somewhere that calves under a certain age (28 days??)were exempt from testing before moving.
Going back to animal husbandry again surely if Farmers want to increase their yields/profits they should look at the amount of cattle killed each year because of lameness, mastitis and infertility. i believe that accounts for about 10 times the amount slaughtered for bTb, but there is probably no compensation paid for that. 

The possum issue in Australia and New zealand is always posted up as a great advocated of culling and eradication of bTb, but unfortunately the possum is not endemic to either country and is seen as removing a non native species as well.

I thought all the bTb cattle slaughtered entered our food chain any way, they just have the lesions removed.
Vaccination not eradication of badgers and cattle is the way to go, but then that would remove the compensation cash cow for the farmers???
I did work for a local badger group in the past so i admit i like badgers and it will be mostly people like you and me and members of the public that will try and disrupt the trial cull not just the Animal rights movement.
 If anything i have said is wrong (apart from spelling and punctuation) please correct me, i like to learn.
If the science backed the cull to eliminate bTb then i would sadly agree with it..but thats never going to happen is it?LOL


Posted By: Madfossa
Date Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 11:33pm

Albino badger

As i said before i used to help out with a badger group, we were told of a recent sighting (late 1980s)
of an albino badger, the 1st recorded in Buckinghamshire. Needless to say the core members of the badger group were very excited and plans were afoot to try and watch it. 
As it happened we had a group meeting that month and we all turned up waiting to hear news of our rare albino badger, had anybody seen it?
Unfortunately one of our members on the way to the meeting had seen it crossing the road in front of his/her car and had hit it, it was then taken to a local museum and placed in a freezer, where we all could see it Unhappy,
Tragically beautifully and quite funny


Posted By: Richard2
Date Posted: 26 Feb 2012 at 1:15am
Ben:
 
"regarding your point about human affection of wildlife, naturally i consider myself a lover too or i wouldnt be an avid amateur naturalist and forum member.
but i try to remember (as Gemma commented on the forum somewhere a while back) that we are part of nature and not aside from it. i endeavour to keep any anthropomorphic and sentimental notions in check.
i feel no inner conflict between loving animals yet controlling them where necessary.

are you a vegetarian or a vegan by any chance?"
 
 
These terms are surprising. Anthropomorphic? Why do you raise that question? Am I projecting human qualities onto badgers? How so?
 
Sentimental? What do you mean by this? It usually means, I take it, that one is allowing feelings of sympathy or wishful thinking to distort one's sense of reality. How am I doing that?
 
I don't understand these accusations. And, no, I'm not a vegan or vegetarian. Perhaps, in consistency, I should be. My position, I suppose, is that it's all right to eat meat if the animals have led a life resembling a natural or wild life reasonably closely, so that human consumption is analogous to the actions of any other predator that kills animals but doesn't transform their evolved lives. This position is a bit weak when it comes to farmed animals, admittedly; for me the question is whether their conditions of life enable them - largely - to fulfil their natural behaviour. To put it more simply, I try hard to avoid factory-farmed meat, but do eat meat produced by organic farms and farms that, as far as I know, treat their animals well. You did ask.
Surely we are both part of nature and aside from it, in that we remain subject to natural evolved dispositions and ecological forces but have developed a capacity for self-conscious moral evaluation and technological power over our environment that distinguishes us from all the other natural creatures we have encountered so far. This gives us special responsibilities without removing us from nature.
 
Richard
 


Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 26 Feb 2012 at 11:07am
I have to say Ben I rather think 'sniping' is a little strong as were your assumptions regarding Richard's views.

It is simply pragmatic to consider first if a method will work before employing it on a large scale. The long term effectiveness of culling is in doubt.

You say farming can't wait. Well that is is exactly why in my opinion that the government favours appeasing farming with this particular solution whether or not it is a well thought out one.

Why do I have to have an opinion on what should be done? Why can't I have the opinion that nothing should be done and that farmers in infected areas should just be left to go bankrupt? Plenty of farmers have gone bankrupt elsewhere for political/economic reasons and most I know these days are either giving up or diversifying.

What we are looking at is a 'quick fix' to help unprofitable farming - both unnecessary and unlikely to be effective in the long term. My view is until that is addressed one doesn't even need to get into the deeper moral issues Richard has put across. Though I'm happy to state my views are inline with his. And no I'm not a vegetarian, animal rights activist or a tree hugger. I am just someone who thinks in this day and age where our progress as a species has already led to huge pressures on, and local extinctions of wildlife, I cannot and will not support the organised culling of any species, particularly when it is not even proven to be effective..



Perhaps it also worth noting that if full-scale culling does take place it will in itself be economic suicide for the farming community. It has always been very easy for pressure groups to influence the public and get them to vote with their feet when food production harms wildlife. Just take a look at Dolphin friendly tuna as an example. I for one would support a boycott of meat produced in areas where Badgers were culled in order to produce it.

Reading back through and I might by wrong, but it rather reads that your view is that anyone who eats meat should support its production regardless of impact or how marginal that production is. That is not a sophisticated argument nor one that stands up to scrutiny regarding past consumer choices.

I drive a car and therefore accept that there is an environmental impact, it doesn't however mean that I would then argue it is OK to poor used engine oil down a drain as it is just a consequence of owning a car.

It is an argument regarding our responsibility to the environment and other species and one that I believe will see the public making the long term decisions.


Posted By: Liz Heard
Date Posted: 29 Feb 2012 at 8:42pm


welcome Madfossa.
your tragi-comic anecdote belongs in a book! LOL! thanks for sharing it






Posted By: Richard2
Date Posted: 29 Feb 2012 at 9:53pm
Ben,
 
You haven't offended me at all. Why would you? I love debate, as you've probably gathered, and you haven't been rude or ad hominem.
 
I am interested in a lot of the questions raised by this exchange, and not all of them apply only to badgers. Some apply to reptiles and amphibians as well, so the discussion isn't out of place in a herp forum. I'd still like to know why you thought I was anthropomorphising and sentimentalising; I really would. I'm interested in ways of thinking about animals that move beyond some of the old polarities.
 
What about this question of anthropomorphism, for example? My assumption is that anthropomorphism, and its partner, theriomorphism, cannot and should not be banished from our relationship with animals. That would be like trying to expel the principle of identifying with others from our relations with other people. Identification and empathy are two of our most important and natural ways of being with each other. But they need to be tempered by alternative ways of seeing. The assumption that other people are like us is necessary, but it has its dangers: chiefly the danger that we will refuse to acknowledge and respect the strangeness and otherness of the people we meet. We need identification, and we need rational distance. Either, on its own, is insufficient and dangerous.
 
I think this is also true of our relations with animals. Anthropomorphism is an indispensable part of the way we live with them. The alternative to it is to hold ourselves aloof and detached, and in doing that we would do violence to our own impulses and perceptions. But other kinds of knowledge, coming from rationality, are always needed to temper and correct anthropomorphism, and be in dialogue with it. Thinking rationally, it is a mistake, for example, to interpret the shape of an animal's face as a smiling or sad look, but what do we do to ourselves if we try to root out these responses from our perceptual life? 
 
Similarly, I'm puzzled (not offended!) by the way you referred to my 'seemingly emotional' responses. Of course they have an emotional element. Show me a response to anything that doesn't. Do you think your
responses are unemotional, and would you want them to be? We don't want to be emotionless, do we? Emotion can be distanced and criticised, but the claim to have transcended it seems to me a dangerous thing. 
 
The enthusiasm for reptiles - the love of seeing them in the wild - that brings us to this forum is an emotional thing.
 
Richard


Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 01 Mar 2012 at 8:09pm
I haven't seen any tempers raised, from where I'm sitting Ben it looks like you wanted to stir things up and it is only you who has any sort of problem with this debate.

I'm interested in your use of the term anthropomorphism also. Perhaps we should steer that way if it is your opinion that we are all too emotional to take on your own particular point of view. I have no problem admitting that I am very emotional about wildlife and the injustice it faces due to our development as a species I certainly don't feel a lesser person for it. I don't actually see much sophistication in any of you arguments on here really, in fact you are extremely predictable.



Posted By: Liz Heard
Date Posted: 01 Mar 2012 at 10:11pm


happy herping 2012.

ben


Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 01 Mar 2012 at 10:29pm
Respond away Ben, I have absolutely no further interest in your 'debate' so don't let me get in your way.


Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 02 Mar 2012 at 9:54pm

I know that I haven't been adding to this thread as much as Richard and Gemma but  have been reading with interest everybody's views. It has been an interesting discussion for sure, and has raised some valuable points.

I think it is too easy to be misinterpret posts on a forum like this and text messages too..... that is right for sure. That is the problem with modern technology; same applies to emails.

I haven't noticed any tempers being raised here, and hope that i haven't raised mine on here either. If it was raised, it certainly wasn't intended to be that way.

Sorry to hear Ben on how you feel. Thanks for the pics though and for an interesting debate.

bye for now.



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