Smaller than you think

We have been members of Cumbria Wildlife Trust ever since we have lived here - over 20 years. We rarely make it to meetings/talks etc. as most are held in places far away from us - or we forget! Nevertheless, we keep the membership going to help with its work.

This afternoon we did make it - to a talk in Kirkby Stephen. This was given by Sally from Cumbria Badgers. An excellent talk, about badgers and their lives - they eat hundreds of worms every day, have tiny eyes because of all the digging they do, their sense of hearing is 600 times that of humans, they are much smaller than we generally imagine.

Of course the huge issue of TB in cattle and badger culls was tackled. Such an emotive issue on both sides of the argument. Cumbria Badgers are doing all they can with a badger vaccination project, the aim being to get as many badgers as possible protected, so culls might be avoided.

However, the whole issue has become over the years so political that it is hard to make sense of it. What I hadn’t realised is that neither Scotland nor Wales has a problem with TB, does not have culls, it is not an issue. Has anyone asked why this is . . .

A good talk anyway from an enthusiastic, passionate speaker and there was a large and interested audience - lots of questions and discussion.